The U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has denied Wise’s application for a national trust bank charter, citing longstanding weaknesses in the payments company’s anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing controls. Wise disclosed the decision on Friday and said it will file a new application under the GENIUS Act.
The denial stalls Wise’s plan to gain direct access to U.S. payment rails and is an unusual public setback from a regulator that has cleared several trust charters for crypto and fintech firms since December. Wise shares fell as much as 11% after the news. The company, which moved its primary listing to Nasdaq from London in May, said its day-to-day U.S. operations are unaffected.
What the OCC found in Wise’s file
The OCC’s decision letter said the application presented “significant supervisory and compliance concerns”. The regulator wrote that Wise’s proposed management and board had “demonstrated a persistent inability” to manage money-laundering and terrorist-financing risk. It also determined that the organizers had not selected directors and officers with enough AML and CFT experience, that the proposed bank’s activities would carry high AML and CFT risk, and that the team lacked sufficient grounding in the banking laws tied to fiduciary work. The agency said the decision does not bar Wise from filing a new charter application later.
Wise had filed in June 2025 to charter Wise National Trust, N.A., a nondepository trust bank that would have connected it directly to Federal Reserve payment rails instead of routing payments through partner banks.
The 2025 state settlement behind the concerns
A month after Wise filed, six state regulators announced a $4.2 million settlement with Wise US over gaps in its AML program. Regulators in California, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York and Texas, each set to receive $700,000, found that the company had not reviewed its AML program often enough and had deficiencies in how it investigated and reported suspicious activity. Wise agreed to correct the issues, bring in an independent reviewer, and file quarterly reports for two years. The company said its business and compliance have matured since it first applied, pointing to changes made in response to OCC feedback and the 2025 order.
Wise’s compliance record has drawn scrutiny outside the U.S. as well. In June 2026, Brussels prosecutors confirmed an advanced investigation into Wise’s European arm over about 500 million euros ($582 million) in suspicious transactions tied to alleged fraud, corruption and drug trafficking. Wise said it is cooperating, that no findings have been shared with it, and that roughly a third of its staff works on financial crime prevention.
Why Wise is pointing to the GENIUS Act
Wise linked its plan to refile to two changes in the U.S. landscape. President Trump signed the GENIUS Act on July 18, 2025, creating the first federal framework for payment stablecoins. The law names the OCC as the primary supervisor for licensed issuers and lets uninsured national trust banks issue stablecoins. Wise also said the Federal Reserve’s decision to pause master account access for uninsured trust banks left its original structure no longer workable. It plans to submit a new application “under a GENIUS Act framework”.
A denial that breaks the OCC’s recent run
The decision runs against the OCC’s record under Comptroller Jonathan Gould. The agency granted conditional trust-charter approvals to Circle, Ripple, Paxos, BitGo and Fidelity Digital Assets in December 2025 and cleared Coinbase in April 2026, and it let Circle open its trust bank on July 10. Bank trade groups had pushed back. The Bank Policy Institute urged the OCC in 2026 to reject five pending trust applications, including Wise’s, arguing the charters could blur what counts as a bank. Rival Revolut has filed its own U.S. charter application this year.
What comes next
Wise has not set a date for its new filing. The company said it processed more than $240 billion in cross-border transactions for about 19 million customers in its 2026 fiscal year and holds money transmitter licenses across 48 states and four territories, plus more than 80 licenses globally. Any fresh application will arrive while the Belgian investigation and the terms of the 2025 U.S. consent order remain open.
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