US OCC Final Rule on the GENIUS Act: Easing Stablecoin Reward Restrictions, More Flexible Issuer Reserve Management

BlockBeats news, October 21 — According to an announcement by the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the final implementation rules of the GENIUS Act will take effect on January 18, 2027. Based on disclosed provisions, the main impact is to preserve room for third-party stablecoin rewards and increase issuers' flexibility in reserve management, but it does not eliminate the prohibition on yield payments or relax the full reserve requirement.

For trading platforms and distribution platforms, removing the legal presumption of illegality for certain issuer and third-party arrangements alleviates the pressure of being presumed in violation under the draft, preserving room to attract users and retain funds through rewards. However, this does not mean existing reward programs have obtained compliance recognition: issuers are still prohibited from directly paying interest or yield, and third-party arrangements must undergo case-by-case review. Therefore, the dispute between banks and crypto platforms over stablecoin rewards and deposit competition remains unresolved.

For issuers, canceling the proposed 20-day weighted average maturity cap and allowing excess reserves to be withdrawn at any time increases flexibility in asset allocation and cash management, potentially improving capital efficiency. But this does not mean reserve returns will necessarily increase, nor does it permit the use of assets backing circulating stablecoins in full. If issuers choose to extend the holding period of eligible assets, they still need to manage interest rate and redemption liquidity risks.

The redemption provisions reflect another layer of constraint: the final rules do not retain the arrangement to automatically extend deadlines during redemption surges, meaning more flexible reserve management does not imply that redemption requirements are simultaneously relaxed. Redemption requests exceeding 10% of a stablecoin's circulating value within 24 hours is a trigger condition for notifying regulators, not a cap on user redemptions.

Overall, the rules make the operational boundaries for issuers and platforms clearer, but implementation still has follow-up conditions. The OCC has yet to announce the application acceptance timeline, and anti-money laundering and sanctions compliance rules will be formulated separately. This release should not be understood as meaning that all issuers or reward businesses have been approved to operate.