Rain, the stablecoin payments company, is seeking a federal charter for a New York-based trust bank. It has asked the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to approve Rain National Trust Bank (RNTB). The company announced the filing on 5 October 2026.
Regulatory approval would authorise the entity to provide fiduciary custody for institutional digital assets and fiat reserves, manage reserve assets for third-party stablecoin issuers, and directly issue and redeem its own proprietary US dollar stablecoins. Traditional commercial banking activities such as taking retail deposits, maintaining consumer accounts, and extending commercial credit remain strictly outside its permitted scope.
As an infrastructure provider, Rain powers the back-end architecture for stablecoin-linked cards, digital wallets, and high-velocity settlement corridors delivered to millions of end-users through institutional partners. Currently, reserve management and safeguarding across these products are fragmented across a patchwork of state-level money transmitter licences, third-party custodians, and external stablecoin issuers. Securing a federal trust bank charter would consolidate these operations under a unified corporate entity subject to single-regulator national oversight.
"The institutions building on Rain want the assets behind their programs held by a fiduciary that answers to a federal regulator. Rain National Trust Bank is how we plan to meet that expectation," by Farooq Malik, CEO and co-founder of Rain
Three lines of business
Rain describes three businesses for the proposed bank, all focused on institutions in digital asset payments:
- Custody: the bank would act as a fiduciary for clients' approved digital and fiat holdings, ring-fenced from its own balance sheet.
- Reserve management: it would run the reserves of permitted stablecoin issuers under the federal stablecoin law, the GENIUS Act.
- Issuance and redemption: it would itself be the issuer of record for US dollar-backed stablecoins, again within the GENIUS Act framework.
The limits matter as much as the services. Because RNTB would be an uninsured trust bank, client holdings would stay the property of each client and sit off the bank's own books. Stablecoin reserves are also meant to stay untouched: Rain says the bank would not put them to work as loans or collateral.
Rain stresses that the parent company is not turning into a bank. Its payments business, including its Principal Membership with Visa and Mastercard, would remain within other group companies, while RNTB would carry its own capital and answer to OCC examiners.
A bank finance veteran to lead it
To lead RNTB, Rain has named Brandon Soto as proposed President and Chief Executive Officer, pending OCC review. His background is in running the finances of fintech-linked banks. His latest role was finance chief at Coastal Financial Corporation. At Block, he led finance for Square Financial Services, its industrial bank in Utah, and helped steer that bank through charter approval by the FDIC and Utah regulators. His earlier posts include finance and administration chief at Green Dot Bank.
"A trust bank's first job is simple. Know what you hold, know who you hold it for, and keep it safe," by Brandon Soto, proposed President and CEO of Rain National Trust Bank
In practice, Brandon said, that means the bank will be designed so it can reconcile what it holds, and for whom, every day.
What happens next
The OCC still has to review the filing, and the public will have a chance to comment before any decision is made. Rain says the public portion of the application will be posted on the OCC's website, and as of 6 October, it had not yet appeared on the OCC's digital assets licensing applications page. Nothing opens until the regulator signs off in full. Law firm Paul Hastings advised Rain on the filing.
Why it matters for compliance teams
Rain joins a growing line of stablecoin and digital asset firms seeking a federal trust charter. The OCC has already given World Liberty preliminary conditional approval for a USD1 trust bank, and Stripe-owned Bridge holds preliminary conditional approval for the national trust bank behind Open Standard's OUSD stablecoin. For background on the route these firms are taking, see what the OCC's de novo signal means for digital asset firms.
For banks, fintechs and card program managers that use Rain, the filing could change who holds the assets behind their programs. Today that risk is spread across several custodians and issuers. If the charter is approved, much of it would sit with a single OCC-supervised fiduciary, so due diligence would shift toward that trust bank's controls, reconciliation, and capital.
Until the OCC rules, nothing changes for existing programs. Firms should watch for the public filing on the OCC website, the comment period, and any conditions the OCC attaches to an approval.
