Block Applies for a National Trust Bank Charter to Consolidate Its Crypto Licenses

NEW YORK — Block, Inc. said it submitted an application to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency on Sept. 8 to charter a national trust bank called Builders Bank & Trust, N.A. The proposed institution would be uninsured and non-depository, meaning it would not hold FDIC-insured deposits, and would instead focus on digital asset custody, riskless-principal execution and stablecoin settlement.

The stated purpose of the filing is consolidation rather than expansion into new business lines. Block currently operates its digital asset activities under more than 50 separate state money-transmitter and trust licenses, each with its own examination cycle, capital requirements and reporting obligations. A national trust charter, if the OCC grants it, would let the company operate those functions under a single federal supervisor instead of a state-by-state patchwork.

The move follows a path other payments and crypto firms have tested with mixed results. National trust and industrial bank charter applications for crypto-focused entities have drawn scrutiny from banking regulators in past cycles over questions of deposit insurance, systemic risk and how "trust bank" activities differ from ordinary commercial banking. The OCC has approved a small number of such charters and denied or left others pending for extended periods, so the timeline for a decision on Block's application is not fixed by the filing itself.

Block emphasized that the application remains under regulatory review and that Builders Bank & Trust would not begin operating in any capacity unless and until the OCC approves it. The company did not attach a timeline for a decision, and the OCC does not publish a standard processing period for novel charter types, so there is no way to independently forecast when — or whether — approval will come.

If approved, the charter would sit alongside the growing number of stablecoin and custody arrangements financial institutions have pursued this year, from bank-issued stablecoin pilots to infrastructure partnerships between card networks and crypto-focused platforms. A single federal charter would give Block a more uniform compliance framework for that activity, but it would not, on its own, change how the underlying digital assets it custodies are regulated at the federal level — that remains governed by existing securities, commodities and banking law as applied to each specific product.