PayPal Partner Paxos Obtains Federal Bank Charter from OCC

Paxos is the latest company to obtain preliminary conditional approval from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to establish a de novo National Trust Bank. This is the third such charter issued by the OCC, the top banking regulator, to a crypto native company. Previously Visa-backed custody firm Anchorage and trading and lending firm Protego received the first federal bank charter earlier this year. It was under the leadership of Brian Brooks, who is now set to become the new CEO of Binance.US, that the OCC took several crypto-forward decisions, including banks now allowed to provide crypto services and use stablecoins to facilitate payment activities. Paxos is the one powering the payment giant PayPal’s crypto service that enables its US users to buy, hold, and sell cryptocurrencies directly from their PayPal digital wallet. Now, PayPal-owned Venmo as well. Besides its crypto brokerage service, Paxos also has its own stablecoin PAX. Along with its very own Paxos Standard (PAX), through its partnership with crypto exchange Binance and Huobi, Paxos custodies all the dollar reserves backing each unit of BUSD and HUSD stablecoins. By obtaining this charter, Paxos becomes the first crypto-native company to receive preliminary conditional approval for a de novo national Trust Bank charter. It will also retain its NYDFS-regulated Trust company and reads the official announcement. In December last year, the company shared that they are seeking a National Trust Bank Charter. Paxos is now both a nationally and state-regulated bank.