U.S. MSB Daily News
USMSB.com — The FDIC is officially getting into the stablecoin rulebook business.
The agency’s Board of Directors voted Tuesday (Dec 16, 2025, EST) to greenlight a notice of proposed rulemaking that would spell out how FDIC-supervised banks apply to issue “payment stablecoins” through a subsidiary under the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act — aka the GENIUS Act.
Bottom line: if you’re an FDIC-supervised state nonmember bank or state savings association and you want your subsidiary to mint a payment stablecoin, you’ll need to apply to the FDIC so that subsidiary can be approved as a permitted payment stablecoin issuer.
The clock the FDIC is proposing
The draft rule lays out hard deadlines that compliance teams will be circling in red:
- 30 days: The FDIC must tell you whether your application is “substantially complete” — or the application is deemed substantially complete if the agency doesn’t respond in time.
- 120 days: Once the application is substantially complete, the FDIC must approve or deny within 120 days — or it’s deemed approved if the clock runs out.
What banks would have to hand over
The proposed process is “tailored,” but it’s not a napkin sketch. The application would generally need to include:
- A description of the stablecoin and the subsidiary’s planned activities
- Capital, liquidity, and reserve-asset plans — plus three-year projections
- Ownership/control details and leadership info (including certain felony disclosure prompts)
- Core policies, procedures, and customer agreements, including custody/safekeeping, asset segregation, transaction processing, redemption, and BSA/AML/CFT + sanctions compliance
- An engagement letter with a registered public accounting firm
Denied? Here’s the appeal lane
If the FDIC says no, the proposal includes a formal appeal track — with a 30-day window to request a hearing, a hearing scheduled within 30 days, and a final determination within 60 days after the hearing.
Hill: first GENIUS Act move — more rules coming
In a board-meeting statement, FDIC Acting Chairman Travis Hill called this proposal the agency’s first action to implement the GENIUS Act and said the FDIC expects to propose additional rules in the months ahead on capital, liquidity, and risk management standards for approved stablecoin-issuing subsidiaries.
What it could cost applicants
The FDIC estimates the paperwork lift at about 80 labor hours per application and pegs the compliance cost around $12,192 per institution, assuming about 10 applications per year on average.
What happens next
The FDIC will take public comments for 60 days after the proposal is published in the Federal Register.
Source: Reporting originally published by FDIC, “FDIC Approves Proposal to Establish GENIUS Act Application Procedures for FDIC-Supervised Institutions Seeking to Issue Payment Stablecoins” , December 16, 2025.
U.S. MSB Daily News
Industry News • Regulatory Analysis • Learning Center
Leave a Reply