Banking Industry Demands 60 More Days Before Responding to Stablecoin Regulations

• Four major banking lobby groups wrote jointly to Treasury, FDIC, FinCEN, and OFAC.
• Banks say three stablecoin rules rely on an OCC framework not yet made final.
• Comment deadlines fall June 2 to 9, before the OCC rule is even close to done.

Four of the most powerful banking lobby groups in the United States have jointly written to four federal agencies asking for more time before the industry must respond to stablecoin regulations. 

The American Bankers Association, the Bank Policy Institute, the Consumer Bankers Association, and the Independent Community Bankers of America filed the request on Monday, targeting the Treasury Department, the FDIC, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, and the Office of Foreign Assets Control. Together, the groups represent institutions holding trillions in deposits and millions of American banking customers.

The Problem With the Timeline

At the centre of the complaint is a sequencing issue that the banks argue makes public comment nearly impossible.

Three separate rule proposals tied to the GENIUS Act, Washington’s flagship stablecoin legislation, are currently open for comment with deadlines falling between June 2 and June 9, 2026. But all three lean heavily on a fourth rule being developed separately by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, a proposal that remains open for comment until May 1 and has not yet been finalized.

The agencies are asking the industry to respond to rules that reference a framework that does not yet exist in its final form.

“Until the OCC’s rule is final, Treasury’s proposal for assessing state-level regulatory regimes is necessarily provisional,” the letter states, “and substantive comment on whether proposed state-level standards meet or exceed the Federal regulatory framework cannot be fully developed.”

The banks are asking for a 60-day extension, timed to kick in only after the OCC finalises its rule.

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Why It Matters

The GENIUS Act represents an important attempt to bring stablecoins, digital tokens pegged to the dollar and increasingly used in payments and financial markets, under a formal U.S. regulatory framework. 

The groups argue that fragmented comment deadlines across interdependent proposals risk producing exactly the kind of inconsistent, patchwork regulation that the GENIUS Act was designed to avoid.

“The public is entitled to the opportunity to review coordinated proposals together,” the letter reads, warning that compressed, staggered deadlines will undermine the agencies’ own stated goal of regulatory consistency.

Who Is Asking

The American Bankers Association speaks for an industry managing $25 trillion in assets and employing more than two million people. The Bank Policy Institute represents the country’s largest universal and regional banks. The Consumer Bankers Association covers retail banking institutions operating across all 50 states. The Independent Community Bankers of America represents the smaller local lenders whose relationship-based model underpins credit in thousands of American towns and cities.

Whether the agencies grant the extension will signal how much the Biden-era instinct to move quickly on crypto regulation has carried over into the current administration’s approach to digital assets.

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