The American Bankers Association today urged the FDIC to harmonize its proposed rulemaking to implement the Genius Act with rules put forward by other federal agencies to ensure a fair and competitive regulatory landscape for payment stablecoin issuers.
The FDIC has advanced proposed rules to establish a regulatory framework for payment stablecoins, as required under the Genius Act. Among other things, the agency would amend its deposit insurance rules to prevent payment stablecoins from being eligible for pass-through insurance. The rulemaking would also clarify that tokenized deposits that satisfy the statutory definition of “deposit” would be treated no differently under the Federal Deposit Insurance Act than other types of deposits.
In a letter, ABA pointed to multiple areas of divergence between the rules proposed by the FDIC and those proposed by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which will be the primary regulator of nonbank stablecoin issuers. The association urged the two agencies and other federal regulators to align their rulemakings so that regulatory differences “do not become a competitive variable that drives activity toward less rigorous regimes.” It also urged agencies to establish a unified timeline for implementing regulations.
ABA cited several examples where the FDIC and OCC rules could be harmonized. For example, both agencies defined “customer” differently, and there are several areas where the two fail to align on issues such as privacy, custody, reserves and redemption, and capital and risk management.
Also, ABA recommended that the FDIC’s proposals on pass-through insurance and tokenized deposits should be adopted as proposed. However, a proposed prohibition on stablecoin issuers extending credit to customers for the purpose of purchasing stablecoins needs clarification so it won’t apply to the issuers’ parent banks or bank affiliates, the association said.
