The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, together with the Federal Reserve Board, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the National Credit Union Administration and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, approved a proposed rule to implement the GENIUS Act by treating permitted payment stablecoin issuers as financial institutions under the Bank Secrecy Act and requiring them to maintain an effective customer identification program. The proposal would set baseline customer identification requirements for these issuers in line with those that apply to other financial institutions. The proposal would require each permitted payment stablecoin issuer to adopt a written customer identification program tailored to its size, business and risks, including risk-based identity verification procedures and processes for cases where a customer’s identity cannot be verified. For FDIC-supervised issuers that are subsidiaries of insured depository institutions, compliance could generally be coordinated with the parent institution’s existing program and shared resources could be used, provided the overall framework addresses the risks of both entities and meets each entity’s applicable requirements. The proposal would also allow a stablecoin issuer to rely on another federally regulated financial institution to perform customer identification procedures for the issuer’s customer if the reliance is reasonable, the other institution is subject to an AML/CFT program with customer identification requirements and federal functional regulation, and it contractually certifies annually that it has implemented the required AML/CFT program and will perform the specified customer identification functions. Comments on the proposal will be accepted for 60 days after publication in the Federal Register.
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation2026-06-18
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation joins proposal to apply Bank Secrecy Act customer identification rules to permitted payment stablecoin issuers
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation joined other federal agencies in proposing to treat permitted payment stablecoin issuers as Bank Secrecy Act financial institutions and require them to maintain customer identification programs under the GENIUS Act. The proposal sets minimum standards for written, risk-based identity verification programs and would allow coordination with a parent insured depository institution’s program. Comments are due 60 days after publication in the Federal Register.