A July 18 Deadline Could Clear Big Banks to Issue Their Own Stablecoins

Regulators face a 18 July stablecoin rules deadline

Federal banking regulators must finalize the rules for bank-issued payment stablecoins by 18 July 2026. The date falls exactly one year after the GENIUS Act became law on 18 July 2025, and the statute set a one-year window to write the rules. If regulators complete the work on time, banks and credit unions could begin issuing their own dollar-pegged tokens after they win supervisory approval. The deadline has turned a broad new law into a firm timetable for the banking industry. Banks that clear the bar could compete directly with established issuers such as Circle and Tether.

Six federal agencies share the same deadline

The GENIUS Act spreads rulemaking across several agencies at once. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA), and the Treasury Department, along with its financial-crime and sanctions units, each published proposed rules earlier this year. Public comment periods have closed, which places the final rules in the short window before the July deadline. Congress wrote the timeline into law, so the agencies have little room to extend it. The OCC oversees national banks, the FDIC covers state-chartered banks, and the NCUA handles credit unions.

The FDIC proposal sets reserve and redemption terms

The FDIC approved its proposed rule on 7 April 2026. The plan would require a permitted payment stablecoin issuer to hold identifiable reserve assets and to meet capital and risk-management standards scaled to its size and risk. It would also require an issuer to redeem a stablecoin within two business days of a valid request. Taken together, the proposal covers reserves, redemption, capital, custody, and risk controls for any bank that wants to issue a token. The proposal builds on the GENIUS Act's core rule that each token stay fully backed by cash or short-term Treasuries.

Stablecoin holders would not receive deposit insurance

The FDIC proposal draws a sharp line on deposit insurance. Deposits held as reserves that back a stablecoin would not be insured to token holders on a pass-through basis. That treatment applies whether or not the issuer is linked to an insured bank. Holders of these tokens would therefore carry different protections than ordinary bank depositors, a distinction regulators want made clear before issuance begins. The GENIUS Act also bars issuers from paying interest or yield to stablecoin holders.

The stablecoin market sits near record size

The rules arrive while dollar-pegged tokens hold a large share of crypto activity. USDC traded at about $1.00 with a market value near $73.2 billion, while Tether's USDT held roughly $184.1 billion (CoinPaprika, 3 July 2026). Together the two largest tokens back more than $250 billion in circulation. That scale explains why national banks are watching the deadline so closely. Neither token moved far from its dollar peg during the period (CoinPaprika, 3 July 2026).

Banks still need approval before issuing tokens

Large lenders, including JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, have signaled interest in issuing or supporting stablecoins. Under the GENIUS Act, no bank can issue a payment stablecoin until regulators finalize the rules and grant supervisory approval. If an agency misses the 18 July date, the framework provides no automatic fallback and no interim guidance. Banks expect to act only once each regulator clears its own final rule.

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