OCC Gives a16z-Backed OpenReserve Preliminary Approval for a Full-Service National Bank Charter
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency granted OpenReserve Bank preliminary conditional approval on Sept 2, less than five months after it applied. The Salt Lake City bank must raise at least $210 million and hold a 12% Tier 1 leverage ratio for three years.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has granted preliminary conditional approval to OpenReserve Bank, N.A., a proposed full-service national bank in Salt Lake City built around tokenized deposits and on-chain settlement. The approval is dated September 2, under five months after the application was filed on April 13, according to Decrypt and crypto.news, which reviewed the OCC letter.
The conditions
At least $210 million in initial paid-in capital, net of pre-opening expenses, to be raised within 12 months.
A Tier 1 leverage ratio of at least 12% for the first three years, well above the typical minimum for national banks.
The bank must open within 18 months and still needs to satisfy the OCC's pre-opening requirements and obtain final approval before taking deposits.
What OpenReserve plans to offer
Unlike the trust charters held by Coinbase, Circle, Ripple, Paxos and BitGo, a full-service national bank charter allows lending and deposit-taking. OpenReserve's own release lists commercial and retail lending, treasury management, traditional and tokenized deposits, foreign correspondent banking, banking-as-a-service, digital-asset custody through a subsidiary, and stablecoin infrastructure designed for compliance with the GENIUS Act. A separate application for a stablecoin-issuing subsidiary has not yet been filed.
The company is led by co-founder and CEO Dee Choubey and co-founder and president Richard Correia. Its backers include Andreessen Horowitz as lead investor, along with Jump Capital, Acrew, Coinbase Ventures, Wintermute Ventures, Clocktower, Quona, AAF Management and Zero Knowledge Ventures. Decrypt reports a $25 million seed round; crypto.news says funding amounts were not disclosed.
Choubey said in the release that supervision, safety and soundness, compliance and customer confidence are not constraints on what the company is building but the foundation of it, and told Decrypt the firm chose the national bank path deliberately.
Context
The approval lands in a busy week for crypto-adjacent banking: Revolut received preliminary conditional approval for a Connecticut-based bank the same week, and World Liberty's trust charter was approved in August. The OCC is targeting November 2026 for final GENIUS Act stablecoin rules, with the framework taking effect in January 2027, which explains why a chartered bank with a stablecoin subsidiary is a coveted structure. The preliminary letter is not a licence to operate; OpenReserve cannot open until the OCC signs off a second time.