The US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) this week rejected UK cross-border payments company Wise’s application for a US national trust bank charter, citing anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorist-financing (AML/CFT) risk. Wise subsequently said it would resubmit its application under the GENIUS Act (the US payment stablecoin law, signed into law on July 18, 2025) and reaffirmed its payment stablecoin strategy. A notable point of contrast: over the past year the OCC has already approved similar trust charters for several digital asset companies — meaning this rejection is not about the “crypto business” category as a whole, but rather a compliance-operations assessment of this one applicant, Wise. For full coverage, see the original Cointelegraph report; the OCC’s own public charter decision documents can be searched on the OCC official site.
Editorial take: what this news means for the card in your wallet
The party directly affected here is not any single specific USDT card, but the supply structure of US BINs. Today, the vast majority of US-region card segments for U-cards ultimately sit under one or two US-licensed institutions or their agent banks. A national trust charter is the shortest path for an issuer to bypass “charter-leasing” intermediaries and directly hold stablecoin reserves while connecting to US payment clearing on its own. Every time this path tightens, the scarcity of US-region BINs ratchets up another notch.
The practical impact on different user groups:
- Users holding MPCard Asia Elite: no action needed. This card runs on an Asia-Pacific virtual Visa line — its card BIN, account jurisdiction, and settlement path all sit outside the US regulatory radius. This is the structural advantage we’ve consistently emphasized in the MPCard review — Asia-Pacific account + Asia-Pacific IP + Asia-Pacific card BIN forming a consistent, clean risk profile.
- Users waiting for MPCard US Direct to resume issuance: push your expectations further out. US Direct currently remains suspended, and the US charter gateway is narrowing rather than widening — don’t bet your subscription renewal plans on it in the near term.
- Cards relying on UK/European licensed entities: Institutions like Wirex, which started as a UK EMI before expanding into the US, now have Wise’s rejection as a direct precedent to reference — for the combination of a UK parent entity plus a US charter, the OCC will now additionally scrutinize the group’s AML framework as a whole.
- Exchange-affiliated cards (such as Bybit Card): These largely don’t issue to US residents in the first place, so this news has no effect on day-to-day usage — but it will affect the timeline for these institutions’ eventual “entry into the US.”
A practical read on the time window: within 7 days, cardholders should not expect any perceptible change; within 30 days, watch for whether Wise announces a specific resubmission date; within 90 days we might see the first substantive progress on “applications filed via the GENIUS Act path” — and applications of this type typically move on a timeline of quarters, not weeks, from submission to decision.
Historical comparison: three different kinds of “US gateway” events
Placed on a timeline, the nature of this event differs from previous episodes.
In 2021, Paxos obtained a conditional national trust charter, and the narrative at the time was that “crypto companies can finally enter the federal regulatory framework.” The core tension in that round was whether the asset class itself would be accepted.
In February 2023, NYDFS halted BUSD issuance, and in March of the same year USDC briefly depegged due to its SVB exposure — the core tension in that round was single-point risk in reserve assets and issuers, with the direct consequence that large numbers of U-card users converted their USDC balances back to USDT.
This time the nature is a third kind: a review of compliance operating capability. The OCC did not say payment stablecoins can’t be done, nor that a UK company can’t do it — it approved similar applications from others within the same year. What it said is that this particular applicant’s AML/CFT framework fell short. This distinction matters for readers: it means the screening standard for issuers seeking future US access will shift from “do you have capital and users” to “do you have a compliance team capable of passing federal review.” Small and mid-sized U-card projects will find this bar nearly impossible to clear, and US-region BINs will concentrate further among a small handful of players.
Worth noting the comparison with the EU: MiCAR moved from legislative passage in 2023 to full applicability on December 30, 2024, giving the market roughly an 18-month buffer, following a “set the rules first, issue charters second” path. The GENIUS Act is following a similar rhythm — per the statutory text, the effective date depends on a fixed period after enactment versus a transition period after final implementing rules are published, whichever comes first (refer to the formal text of the act and regulators’ published rules for specifics). In other words, we’re currently in an in-between zone where rule details have not fully landed, but regulators have already begun reviewing applicants against the new standard.
Compliance boundaries: which lines are clear right now
For ordinary cardholders, three boundaries are worth distinguishing:
- Clearly permitted: non-US residents using a non-US-issued USDT virtual card to pay overseas merchants. This faces no legal obstacle in most Asia-Pacific jurisdictions; for local variation see the Hong Kong compliance guide and Japan compliance guide.
- Gray zone: US residents using an offshore-issued U-card. This is not a criminal matter, but issuers’ terms of service typically exclude US residents outright, and the risk falls on the account-being-frozen side. See the US compliance guide for the relevant criteria.
- Currently in flux: the US licensing status of stablecoin issuers themselves. Once the GENIUS Act is fully implemented, the room for unlicensed entities to issue payment stablecoins within the US will be compressed, and this will flow top-down into card-side reserve and settlement arrangements.
Wise’s home regulatory environment is also worth comparing — the UK compliance guide lays out the divide between UK EMI licenses and crypto-asset services.
Four things worth watching next
- The public timing of Wise’s resubmission — whether it happens within Q3 2026, and whether it simultaneously discloses AML remediation details.
- Whether the OCC publishes a detailed decision document for this rejection — if it does, that would be the market’s first look at a quantified regulatory bar for a payment company’s AML framework.
- Publication of the GENIUS Act’s implementing rules — once the Treasury and federal banking regulators finalize the rules, the transition-period countdown truly begins.
- Renewal activity on existing US-region BINs — if a batch of US-region card segments gets tightened or reissued in Q4, that would be the first visible signal of this round of regulatory contraction reaching the retail level.
Editorial recommendation
Users holding MPCard Asia Elite: no action needed — this event does not touch any part of the Asia-Pacific line.
Users planning to open a card: if your main use case is subscriptions like ChatGPT Plus or Claude Pro (both officially $20/month, per the official pages), don’t wait around for a “US-region BIN” — as covered in the ChatGPT Plus subscription scenario, an Asia-Pacific BIN is entirely sufficient for these merchants, and account-region consistency matters more than the BIN’s country of issuance.
Users already using a US-region BIN: consider preparing a non-US backup card within the coming quarter — not because something is about to go wrong now, but because the transmission cycle for this kind of licensing contraction typically runs 6–12 months, and preparing ahead of time costs far less than switching payment methods on short notice. You can start with a cost comparison using the lowest-fee USDT cards list.
What not to do: don’t sell or rebalance your stablecoin holdings because of this news. The OCC rejected a payment company’s charter application — this has nothing to do with the reserve status of any stablecoin, which is fundamentally different from the situation in March 2023.