The Federal Reserve on September 24 opened two proposals for public comment requiring Board-supervised payment stablecoin issuers to back their tokens entirely with permissible assets, and creating a tailored application track for banks seeking to issue the tokens.

The first proposal would require full-reserve backing of every outstanding token in high-quality liquid assets, primarily short-dated U.S. Treasury bills. It also imposes standardized capital requirements, sets risk-management standards, and governs firms that safekeep the underlying collateral.

The second would set up a defined application, business-plan, and review process for any Board-supervised institution that wants to mint payment stablecoins, with formal procedures for appeals, hearings, and final Board decisions.

The comment period closes 60 days after the proposals are published in the Federal Register.

What is the Fed actually proposing?

The two notices form the central bank's contribution to a multi-agency rollout of the GENIUS Act, the stablecoin law President Donald Trump signed in July 2025. They cover the slice of the market the Fed directly supervises, leaving the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Treasury Department to fill in adjacent pieces of the federal framework.

Treasury has separately proposed rules that would bar platforms from selling noncompliant stablecoins to U.S. customers. The OCC, meanwhile, is racing to finalize its own stablecoin framework by November, ahead of a January statutory deadline that the GENIUS Act imposed on chartering agencies.

How would reserve backing work in practice?

Under the first proposal, a Board-supervised issuer must back each token dollar-for-dollar with permissible holdings, eliminating the partial-reserve or non-cash collateral structures that some offshore issuers rely on. The rule also codifies capital floors calibrated to credit, market, and operational risks a stablecoin book can generate.

That is a notable shift from the current patchwork, where issuers such as Circle (USDC) and Tether (USDT) disclose reserve composition voluntarily and operate under varying state money-transmission or non-U.S. regimes. Bringing reserve rules into a federal banking-supervisor rulebook would align the largest dollar-pegged tokens with the same disclosure and capital discipline that govern insured depository institutions.

What does the bank-issuance track require?

The second proposal lays out a licensing path for Board-supervised banks that want to mint payment stablecoins, requiring a written business plan, financial information, and a description of the proposed issuance, redemption, and reserve-management operations.

It also sets out administrative safeguards: a designated appeals process, a hearing stage, and a procedure for final Board decisions. The structure mirrors existing bank-activity application frameworks and is designed to bring stablecoin issuance inside the supervisory perimeter that already governs other bank functions.

How does this fit the broader GENIUS Act rollout?

The Fed's package sits between the OCC's narrower, charter-focused rules and Treasury's consumer-facing restrictions. Each agency is writing its own slice of a statute that set the first federal framework for dollar-pegged tokens, and the three rulemakings together will determine who can issue, distribute, and sell stablecoins inside the United States.

The Trump administration has framed compliant stablecoins as a tool to extend the dollar's global dominance, and full-reserve backing, capital floors, and bank-grade oversight sit at the center of that pitch. The operational target: keep tokens redeemable at par, keep reserve claims enforceable, and keep issuance activity inside the regulated banking perimeter.

The OCC's November deadline and the Fed's 60-day comment window set a tight parallel track. By early 2027, every major federal banking supervisor will have a stablecoin rule on the books, pulling the market's center of gravity away from offshore issuers and toward U.S.-regulated banks and their affiliates.