SALT LAKE CITY — OpenReserve Bank secured preliminary conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency on September 2 to operate as a full-service national bank in Utah. The OCC completed its review in under five months, following the April 13 application.
The fintech must raise at least $210 million in paid-in capital and maintain a Tier 1 leverage ratio of 12 percent for its first three years. OpenReserve has 12 months to close the capital raise and 18 months to open for business, or the conditional approval expires.
OpenReserve positions itself as an "always-on" bank using blockchain-based settlement instead of batch processing like ACH or wire transfers. Co-founders Diwakar Choubey, formerly of MoneyLion, and Richard Correia deliberately chose the full national bank charter—a departure from peers.
Coinbase, Circle, Ripple, Paxos, and BitGo all hold national trust charters, which permit custody and fiduciary work but prohibit deposit-taking and lending. OpenReserve's full charter removes those restrictions, enabling both activities.
The startup raised $25 million in seed funding led by a16z crypto, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Jump Capital, and Wintermute Ventures.
OpenReserve plans to serve institutional clients with tokenized deposits, treasury management, and foreign correspondent banking. It also intends to launch a banking-as-service platform and operate a separate subsidiary for issuing U.S. dollar-backed stablecoins—subject to the GENIUS Act, which took effect in July 2025.
Comptroller Jonathan Gould characterized these approvals as integrating blockchain-native firms into the federally supervised banking system. The OCC also granted preliminary approval this week to British fintech Revolut for a national bank charter in Connecticut.
The OCC's crypto-related approvals have drawn political fire. Senator Elizabeth Warren argued in May that prior trust-bank approvals violated the National Bank Act, calling the firms "crypto banks, not trust companies." The OCC nonetheless approved a national trust charter for the Trump-linked World Liberty stablecoin venture in August.
