The GENIUS Act promised a single federal standard for payment stablecoins. With the Federal Reserve's draft rules now published, there are three federal proposals, and they differ on exactly the questions a treasurer would want answered before holding a balance.
On 24 September the Federal Reserve Board proposed two rules under the GENIUS Act, the US payment stablecoin law signed in July 2025. One sets out how insured state member banks apply to issue through a subsidiary. The other is the substance: reserves, redemption, capital and conduct for the issuers the Fed supervises. Both appeared in the Federal Register on 29 September, and comments are due by 30 November. The next day the Treasury published an interim final rule, effective immediately, setting out how states apply to have their own regimes certified as comparable.
The Fed's drafts complete a set. The OCC published its proposal earlier this year for national banks, federal savings associations, their subsidiaries and the nonbank firms seeking federal approval to issue. The FDIC followed on 9 April for subsidiaries of the banks it supervises. The Act itself takes effect on 18 January 2027, or 120 days after final regulations are issued if that comes first.
Read side by side, the three drafts agree where the statute is specific and diverge where it left room. For anyone holding stablecoins as working capital, or building a product that does, the divergence is the part worth reading.
What all three hold constant
The common floor is real. Reserves must back outstanding coins one-for-one, in a short list of assets: cash, central bank balances, deposits, Treasury bills, notes and bonds with 93 days or less to maturity, related repo, and funds holding only those. Holders must be able to redeem in a timely way, generally within two business days. And an issuer may not pay interest or yield to a holder simply for holding the coin.
That last point is where the commercial arguments of the next year will be fought. The statute binds issuers. It is less explicit about the businesses around them: the affiliate that runs a rewards programme, the exchange or wallet that shares in an issuer's reserve income and passes some of it on to users. In Arnold & Porter's reading, the Fed's framework treats affiliate and white-label arrangements designed to achieve the same result as presumptively prohibited, and the OCC's draft takes a similar line. Willkie Farr notes that the broader question remains tied to the market-structure legislation still before Congress. A treasurer being offered a return on a stablecoin balance should assume, for now, that the return either comes from a different product or rests on contested ground.
Where they part company
The differences cluster around what happens when something goes wrong, which is the only time a balance-holder really cares.
Figure 1
Federal Reserve (Sept 2026) | OCC (early 2026) | FDIC (Apr 2026) | |
|---|---|---|---|
Who it covers | Fed-supervised issuers and custodians, including subsidiaries of insured state member banks | Subsidiaries of national banks and federal savings associations; nonbank federal applicants; certain foreign issuers | Subsidiaries of FDIC-supervised insured banks |
Reserve concentration | Principles-based diversification | 40% single-institution limit, further concentration limits, maturity requirements | 40% limit on any single eligible institution |
Heavy redemptions | Two business days; extension only at the Board's discretion | Requests above 10% of issuance in 24 hours extend the period to seven calendar days | Two business days; immediate notice of significant requests; extension at the FDIC's discretion |
Reserve shortfall | Notice, then restore backing or liquidate | Liquidate and redeem, without fees, after 15 consecutive business days short | Notice; consequences at the FDIC's discretion |
Capital shortfall | Remediation plan after one quarter-end; liquidation after two | No new issuance after one quarter-end; liquidation after two | FDIC directives; no mandatory suspension |
Same statute, three answers to the stress questions. All three are proposals and may change before they are finalised. Summarised from law-firm analysis (Willkie Farr, Mayer Brown, Arnold & Porter), not from the rule texts directly.
Take the OCC's redemption provision. If holders ask to redeem more than a tenth of an issuer's coins within 24 hours, the issuer gets up to seven calendar days rather than two business days. As run protection it is sensible. It is also a statement about when your cash might not be available. A treasury team that models a stablecoin balance as two-day liquidity is right in ordinary conditions, and wrong in exactly the conditions in which it would want to draw on it.
The shortfall rules show the same split. The OCC is mechanical: fifteen consecutive business days below full backing and the issuer liquidates and redeems. The Fed requires notice, then either restored backing or liquidation. The FDIC leaves the response to its own judgement and has asked whether it should set a clock. None of these is wrong. The regulators are making different trade-offs between predictability and flexibility. But the holder lives with the trade-off, and which one applies is decided by the issuer's charter, not by the name on the coin.
Capital is the Fed's most detailed section. It proposes a 2% charge on reserves held as uninsured deposits or under-collateralised repo, plus an operational charge that steps down from 2% on the first $20 billion in circulation to 1.5% on the next $30 billion and 1% above $50 billion, with a further charge equal to a quarter of the issuer's average non-reserve revenue. An issuer short at one quarter-end files a remediation plan; one still short at the next must liquidate reserves and redeem. The OCC moves faster, barring new issuance after a single missed quarter.
"Which stablecoin" has become a less useful question than "which issuer, under which charter, supervised by whom".
The question for the finance team
GENIUS was sold as clarity, and at the level of the statute it delivers it. At the level of operations, two coins that both trade at a dollar can carry different answers on concentration, run protection and the route to liquidation. That has three practical consequences.
For corporate treasury, issuer due diligence now starts with the charter and the supervising agency, and the cash or investment policy should state which regimes are acceptable for operating balances. Liquidity assumptions should be set for the stressed redemption period, not the ordinary one.
For fintech product teams, a stablecoin feature built around one issuer's terms may not port cleanly to another, and any balance-reward mechanic designed before these drafts should be reviewed against the affiliate presumption before January.
For both, the drafts are not the rules. Comments close on 30 November, and the issues most likely to move are the ones industry will push hardest on: the yield presumption, the Fed's principles-based diversification standard and the speed of mandatory liquidation. The final texts, not these proposals, will decide what a stablecoin balance actually is on the balance sheet.
Sources and notes. Federal Reserve Board proposals issued 24 September 2026 and published in the Federal Register on 29 September 2026 (application proposal, 91 Fed. Reg. 61,346; framework proposal, 91 Fed. Reg. 61,580; Docket Nos. R-1899 and R-1900); comments due 30 November 2026. Treasury interim final rule on state certification review, published 30 September 2026, effective immediately. FDIC proposal issued 9 April 2026. OCC proposal published in early 2026 (sources differ on the exact date). GENIUS Act signed 18 July 2025; effective on the earlier of 18 January 2027 or 120 days after final regulations. Reserve, redemption, capital and shortfall provisions summarised from Arnold & Porter (October 2026), Willkie Farr & Gallagher (October 2026) and Mayer Brown (April 2026). The affiliate and white-label yield presumption is as described by Arnold & Porter; verify against the framework text before publication. FinancyHub has no commercial relationship with any issuer or firm named. Journalism, not investment, legal or procurement advice. Corrections welcome.
