Rain seeks OCC trust-bank charter for custody and stablecoin services

Rain announced on October 5 that it had filed an application with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to establish Rain National Trust Bank, a proposed New York subsidiary serving institutional clients in the stablecoin payments ecosystem. The company has requested approval; it has not announced that the charter has been granted.

If approved, the trust bank would combine three functions: fiduciary custody of approved digital assets and U.S. dollars, management of reserves for permitted stablecoin issuers, and issuance and redemption of dollar-backed stablecoins. Rain describes those activities as a federally supervised option alongside the infrastructure its payments partners use today.

The proposed structure would separate custody from the payments business. Rain says the trust bank would be a separately capitalized subsidiary, with clients' assets segregated from its own holdings. The dollars and digital assets held for identified clients would be custody assets, rather than deposits or liabilities of the bank.

That distinction also defines what the proposal would exclude. Rain National Trust Bank would not accept deposits, offer consumer accounts or make commercial loans. It would be an uninsured trust bank and would not have FDIC insurance. Rain says reserves backing any stablecoin it issues would not be pledged, lent or reused.

Rain itself would remain a stablecoin payments platform. The company says its existing card, wallet and money-movement programs would continue operating, along with its existing partnerships. The trust-bank application is a proposed addition to that structure, rather than evidence that today's programs have moved into a newly approved bank.

Brandon Soto is the proposed president and chief executive, subject to OCC review. He most recently served as chief financial officer of Coastal Financial Corporation and previously held that role at Square Financial Services, where he helped prepare its bank-charter application and led finance, treasury and capital management.

CoinDesk independently reported the application on October 7 and explained the limited-purpose trust-bank model. Cointelegraph also reported the filing on October 6. The company announcement remains the primary source for the proposed services and explicit limits on the bank's activities.

The application must undergo OCC review, including a public-comment period. Rain says the public portion will be available through the agency and describes the proposal as a multi-year initiative. It has supplied no decision date. Operations would begin only after all required approvals, leaving the filing and proposed business model as the verified developments at this stage.