The comment period for two Federal Reserve proposals related to the agency’s implementation of the Genius Act needs to be extended, the American Bankers Association urged the Fed in a recent comment letter.
Late last month, the Fed issued two companion notices of proposed rulemaking to implement its responsibilities under the Genius Act. One proposal would establish the procedures an insured state member bank must follow to obtain Fed approval for a subsidiary to become a board-supervised permitted payment stablecoin issuer, or PPSI. The other would implement substantive reserves, capital, redemption, risk management, custody and reporting requirements for PPSIs; establish safeguards for board-supervised custodians; and clarify certain stablecoin activities of board-regulated institutions.
ABA, along with the Bank Policy Institute, the Consumer Bankers Association and the, Independent Community Bankers of America sent a request for a 60-day extension of the comment periods related to “Implementing the Federal Reserve Board’s responsibilities under the Genius Act” and “Application procedures for board-supervised insured depository institutions seeking approval for a subsidiary to issue payment stablecoins.” The comment periods currently are scheduled to close on Nov. 30. The request would extend the deadline to Jan. 29.
“The board modeled the prudential proposal on the proposal of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. It tags its questions to the corresponding OCC questions and invites comment on where its framework differs from those of the other agencies,” the associations explained as part of their reasoning for the extension. “The OCC proposal is the board’s own benchmark for public comment. That benchmark is about to change. [OCC] Comptroller Gould has stated that the OCC intends to finalize its rule by November 2026. Once final, the OCC rule, not its proposal, is the relevant comparison. Under the current schedule, commenters could have days, at most, to analyze it.”
The associations also urged the Fed to keep PPSI requirements “substantially similar and appropriately rigorous” across agencies, and the Fed can only do so with a comment record that addresses the OCC’s final rule, the groups wrote. The OCC’s upcoming final rule also underscores the need for the agencies to coordinate on the timing and effective dates of their final rules, they said.
