Ramp’s bid for a national trust bank charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to manage investments and hold digital assets for clients is the latest in a wave of fintech applications under what is seen as a more permissive regulatory environment.
The move could help the spend management platform expand its product lineup and generate new revenue, but would also bring added regulatory obligations and risks. It also adds to tensions between fintechs and banking industry groups challenging the OCC’s authority to grant such charters.
Ramp, which raised $1.85 billion at a $60 billion valuation in a funding round announced Oct. 15, declined to comment beyond the announcement.
Federal supervision could help it attract clients who would feel more comfortable holding digital assets with a regulated institution, said Thomas Hoenig, a distinguished senior fellow at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center and former vice chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
“The value of the charter is what I call the putting the government's imprimateur on the institution so that the depositor feels safer, and that helps broaden your market,” he said.
Several fintech companies have pursued similar charters, including Modern Treasury and Rain, whose applications are pending. Stripe’s Bridge subsidiary received conditional approval in February, followed by Coinbase in April. Ripple received conditional approval in December 2025. Others have moved further along. Circle received final approval in July, while BitGo, Paxos and Fidelity Digital Assets have converted state-chartered trust companies into national trust banks.
Digital asset custody is something they have in common. It refers to holding and safeguarding assets such as cryptocurrencies for clients, including protecting the digital keys needed to access them. Other proposed services vary by company.
Banking industry groups have pushed back, arguing that some applicants are seeking the benefits of a federal bank charter without taking on the same obligations as commercial banks. The Bank Policy Institute has challenged applications involving services it argues fall outside the OCC’s authority to charter trust banks.
Hoenig said many banks feel these charters let fintechs compete with them without facing the same regulatory requirements. A deeper concern, he suggests, is being displaced as financial intermediaries.
“Their real fear is they'll be disintermediated, and stablecoins are probably their greatest fear,” he said.
The Independent Community Bankers of America took that fight to court on Oct. 2, suing the OCC over its approach to national trust charters. The group says the OCC went beyond its legal authority by letting trust banks do business outside traditional fiduciary services. That lets them compete with community banks without having to follow the same rules, the bankers’ group argues. ICBA declined to comment on pending litigation.
“Any non-fiduciary firm seeking the benefits of a federal bank charter should meet the same standards as community banks,” ICBA President and CEO Rebeca Romero Rainey said in an Oct. 2 statement.
Ji Hun Kim, CEO of trade association Crypto Council for Innovation, responded on Oct. 5, calling the ICBA suit “an attempt to resist national trust charters, payments innovation and competition in financial services.”
Hoenig said fintechs can build expertise and a customer base by working with bank partners on services beyond the scope of their trust charters. That could position them to offer those services directly if they eventually secure the regulatory approvals.
He also warned that the government could come under pressure to rescue these firms in a crisis if they become too big to fail.
“If they get large enough and systemic enough, then the government will tend to bail them out should there be a crisis,” Hoenig said. “And there will be a crisis in the future, and we’ll have to see how the government reacts to the failure of an individual fintech company that has size.”
Photo: Han Zheng / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.
Disclosure: The author was previously a consultant for Ramp.
