March brought another wave of developments that could profoundly shape the financial system over the next few years. Crypto firms reached a milestone in the long running battle for access to a Fed Master Account, another batch of fintechs and global platforms are pursuing bank charters, and policymakers weighed in on stablecoin yields. Meanwhile, regulators moved to ease compliance burdens on community banks, customer satisfaction data affirmed the strength of relationship banking, and AI investment accelerated across the largest institutions. Here’s what community banks and credit unions should know.
We've been tracking the charter application wave since January, and March brought the biggest cluster yet. Crypto.com received conditional OCC approval for a national trust bank charter — joining Circle, Ripple, Paxos, BitGo, Fidelity Digital Assets, and Stripe subsidiary Bridge, all of which have received at least conditional approval in recent months. Payments firm Payoneer filed for its own OCC national trust charter, and Morgan Stanley made headlines pursuing a trust charter for digital asset custody, which is a signal that this trend has well outgrown its crypto startup origins. Then Revolut, the U.K.-based fintech with over 70 million global customers, filed for a full U.S. national bank charter with the OCC and FDIC, backed by a $500 million U.S. investment commitment. Revolut's entry is being watched as a real test of whether international fintechs can crack a market that swallowed N26 and Monzo whole. The OCC is feeling the volume, with Comptroller Gould confirming the agency is rotating examination staff into chartering roles just to keep up.
And it's not just the OCC or crypto. The FDIC approved Edward Jones' industrial loan company charter after a nearly six-year journey. The investment firm's Utah-based bank plans to open in 2027 with at least $330 million in initial capital, offering deposits and CDs. Edward Jones joins Ford and GM, which received ILC approvals in January, with PayPal and Nissan still in the queue. The appetite for regulated banking access now spans crypto exchanges, payments firms, automakers, investment houses, and global super apps.
The growing wave of charter applications highlights how attractive regulated banking access has become for firms across the financial ecosystem. What began largely as a crypto driven push now includes payments companies, investment firms, automakers, and global fintech platforms. Access to deposits, payment rails, and the credibility that comes with a regulated charter continues to be a powerful draw.
For community banks and credit unions, the key point is that the boundaries of the banking system are gradually expanding. Many of these applicants are pursuing specialized charters tied to particular business models, and it remains to be seen how many will ultimately scale or compete directly with traditional institutions. Still, the policy decisions regulators make now will shape how new entrants participate in the financial system and how they interact with the existing banking infrastructure. That’s something worth watching closely going forward.
At Acceleron, we’ve been pursuing our own bank charter for several years. Not because it’s the latest industry trend, but because long-term correspondent banking requires durable structure. Some firms are just now joining the line. We’ve been building toward it. Read more about our journey to modernize cross-border payments and help community FIs generate non-interest income on international payments.
The debate over who gets access to the Federal Reserve's payment rails took a real turn in early March when the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City granted a master account to Kraken Financial, the banking arm of crypto exchange Kraken. Chartered in Wyoming as a special-purpose depository institution, Kraken Financial can now move money on the same rails banks or credit unions use, with direct access to the Fed's core payment system. The approval is for an initial one-year term, and it makes Kraken the first crypto firm to ever get there. The crypto industry has been chasing this milestone for years.
Banking trade groups pushed back fast. The ABA questioned the timing since final rules under the GENIUS Act and the Fed's own "skinny" master account framework are still unfinished, and the argument is that the Fed jumped ahead of the public notice and comment process that was supposed to inform all of this. The Bank Policy Institute went further, calling out a lack of transparency and questioning whether the risks were adequately addressed.
While Kraken’s approval is a notable milestone in the ongoing debate over who should have access to the Federal Reserve’s payment infrastructure, the one year approval suggests the Fed may be testing the concept in a controlled way rather than opening the door broadly.
For community banks and credit unions, the bigger picture is that the rules around payment system access are still being written. Traditional banks remain the core operators of the U.S. payments ecosystem, supported by long standing supervisory frameworks around capital, liquidity, and safety and soundness. Correspondent banking relationships and existing payment rails are not going away. What may evolve over time is how new participants connect to that infrastructure and the regulatory expectations that come with it.
Read more about stablecoins and what the law says:
The stablecoin yield debate moved into open political territory in early March when President Trump posted on social media that banks are "threatening and undermining" the CLARITY Act — the crypto market-structure bill that passed the House in 2025 but remains stalled in the Senate — and called on banks to make a deal with the crypto industry. The dispute centers on whether platforms like Coinbase can pay yields on stablecoin balances, effectively turning them into a savings-like product for everyday users. Banks have pointed to a Treasury study estimating that yield-bearing stablecoins could drain as much as $6.6 trillion from the banking system, and JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon has framed the issue as one of regulatory consistency, saying that platforms paying interest on stored balances should face the same capital, liquidity, and deposit insurance requirements as banks.
Coinbase is already drawing a distinction between issuer-paid interest, which is prohibited, and what they’re calling “rewards” for stablecoin use, which are not explicitly banned. The OCC comment period runs through May 1, and the CLARITY Act negotiations and potential litigation could both shape or override whatever the agency ultimately finalizes.
The stablecoin yield debate is fundamentally a question about what counts as a deposit product, and who gets to offer one. If yield-bearing stablecoins are ultimately permitted without bank-equivalent regulation, platforms could offer returns on Treasury-backed dollar balances that look and feel like savings products to everyday consumers. That has obvious implications for deposit funding, particularly for institutions that rely heavily on retail deposits to fund local lending.
How significant that impact would be in practice is uncertain. Much depends on how the OCC finalizes its rule after the May 1 comment period closes, how Congress resolves the yield question in the CLARITY Act, and whether any of this survives legal challenge. What's clear is that the regulatory decisions being made now will determine the competitive boundaries between traditional deposits and stablecoin-based alternatives, and those boundaries are still being drawn. Community banks and credit unions that want to shape where those lines land can submit public comments to the OCC before May 1 at regulations.gov; it's one of the more direct ways institutions have to weigh in on rules that will affect them.
The OCC finalized two rules aimed squarely at reducing compliance burden for community banks. The first drops the Fair Housing Home Loan Data System regulation, which is a data collection requirement the agency called largely duplicative. The second makes it easier for institutions with $30 billion or less in assets to qualify for expedited or reduced filing procedures when pursuing corporate activities and transactions.
These aren't the first moves of 2026, either. Starting January 1, the OCC eliminated policy-based examination requirements not mandated by law for community banks, giving examiners more room to tailor the scope and frequency of exams to each institution's actual size, complexity, and risk profile.
Streamlined licensing means fewer procedural hoops when pursuing corporate transactions or structural changes. Flexible exam scoping means examiners should be focused on what actually matters for your institution, not working through a fixed checklist. That said, this isn't a hall pass. The OCC has been clear that safety and soundness expectations remain fully intact, and institutions that document their risk management practices well are going to get the most out of the added flexibility. The banks that benefit most will be the ones that are already running a tight ship.
The 2026 American Customer Satisfaction Index Finance Study is out, and the headline is one community banks could be sharing widely: bigger is not better when it comes to how customers feel about their bank. Superregional banks, which have at least $50 billion in assets but are smaller than the Big 4, saw their aggregate satisfaction score drop 3% year over year to 77 out of 100. The nation's four largest banks held steady at 79. Smaller regional and community banks? Held firm at 83 for the second year in a row, topping the overall banking industry score of 80.
Community and regional banks outscored both groups across nearly every satisfaction benchmark, with the only area where larger banks had an edge being branch and ATM availability. The report also flagged M&A as a risk worth watching: past consolidation waves have historically been followed by customer satisfaction declines in the years that followed.
The results reinforce something many community bankers already know: smaller institutions continue to compete effectively on customer experience. The consistent satisfaction gap suggests that relationship banking, local decision making, and personalized service remain meaningful differentiators even as digital channels expand across the industry. For community banks and credit unions, the takeaway is to protect the advantage that produced those scores.
Institutions growing through acquisitions will need to maintain strong communication and service to the customer during transitions, since consolidation has historically been followed by dips in satisfaction.
In a banking environment increasingly defined by technology investment and scale, the study is a reminder that service quality still matters, and that community institutions continue to have a strong position when it comes to delivering it.
Read our profile of Chief Innovation Officer of First National Bankers Bank David Peterson and his approach to experimentation:
The AI investment numbers from big banks are hard to ignore. Banks tracked by Evident Insights made 199 tech venture investments in 2025, with AI-specific deals growing at a 21% compound annual growth rate, which is more than double the 8% rate for general tech deals. Wells Fargo, Citi, and Goldman Sachs led in AI deal volume.
At the institution level, the ambition is equally clear: HSBC named generative AI its leading technology investment area, with 85% of employees already using it and 50 core processes — including fraud detection and credit applications — being redesigned around it. TD Bank rolled out roughly 75 AI use cases for loan underwriting, improving customer service, and more in 2025 and is now focused on agentic AI to reimagine banking operations.
The scale of investment at the largest banks can make AI adoption feel like a big-bank race, but the underlying shift is broader than that. Artificial intelligence is increasingly becoming part of the operational toolkit across financial services, particularly in areas like fraud monitoring, document processing, credit analysis, and customer support. The technology itself is becoming more accessible through vendor platforms and embedded tools, meaning adoption is no longer limited to institutions with the largest technology budgets.
For community banks and credit unions, the more practical question is where AI can improve everyday workflows and efficiency. Many of the early use cases being tested at large institutions are already appearing in vendor solutions used by smaller banks. As the tools mature, institutions that experiment thoughtfully and focus on clear operational benefits may be better positioned than those waiting for the technology cycle to fully settle.
U.S. military strikes on Iranian targets in late February were followed by a new round of sanctions activity from the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). In the days surrounding the strikes, OFAC added 32 Iranian individuals, entities, and vessels to its Specially Designated Nationals list. Compliance experts expect increased attention to customer due diligence and sanctions screening as geopolitical tensions evolve.
The issue is not limited to large international banks. Institutions that process international payments, energy related transactions, or trade finance activity can encounter exposure through customers, counterparties, or global supply chains. Fintech partnerships add another layer, particularly in bank sponsorship arrangements where fintechs are responsible for maintaining their own sanctions and AML compliance frameworks. Recent enforcement actions have underscored regulators’ expectations that screening programs go beyond basic name checks to include transaction patterns, industries, and geographic exposure. All institutions and US businesses should review and comply with the US Treasury's Sanctions Compliance Framework to help identify and hedge sanctions risks.
Sanctions developments tied to geopolitical events tend to move quickly through the financial system. Community banks and credit unions that process international wires, maintain correspondent relationships, or support fintech programs may see increased scrutiny around screening and transaction monitoring as OFAC lists evolve.
For most institutions, the practical response is straightforward: confirm sanctions lists are current, review monitoring procedures, and ensure fintech partners understand their own compliance responsibilities. As international payments and fintech partnerships become more common across the industry, maintaining a well documented sanctions program remains an important part of managing operational and regulatory risk.
For more on sanctions and AML, head to our Co-Founder and Chief AML Officer Sarah Beth Felix’s newsletter, Dirty Money Weekly, where she breaks down the latest news developments.
In last month’s Community Banking News Update, we covered charter debates, bank fintech acquisitions, and a new credit union tax. If you missed it, you can read the February Community Banking News Update here.
Acceleron is a modern correspondent banking platform that empowers community banks and credit unions to automate international wire transfers, capture non-interest income, and compete more effectively with big banks. With a foreign exchange (FX) marketplace and currency conversion engine, Acceleron’s API-first infrastructure helps institutions turn cross-border payment flows into efficient, revenue-generating opportunities. Serving over 200 financial institutions and facilitating more than $1 billion in international payments annually, our correspondent banking services and international payment automation solutions are pre-integrated seamlessly with Fiserv Payments Exchange, Braid, and other leading payments platforms.
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