Treasury Proposes the First GENIUS Act Rules on Who May Issue a Payment Stablecoin

The Treasury Department has proposed the first substantive rules under the GENIUS Act, the 2025 statute that created a federal framework for payment stablecoins. The notice of proposed rulemaking was announced on August 17, 2026 and published in the Federal Register on August 18, under RIN 1505-AC95 and docket number TREAS-DO-2026-0496. Comments are due October 19, 2026.

A payment stablecoin is a digital token designed to hold a fixed value against a reference asset, usually the US dollar, and intended for use in payments rather than as a speculative instrument. Until the GENIUS Act, no single federal statute governed who could issue one. The Act, enacted July 18, 2025, established that framework. This proposal implements Section 3 of it.

What the rule actually covers

The scope is narrower than the headline suggests. This proposal deals with issuance, offer and sale — the question of who is permitted to put a payment stablecoin into the US market and under what conditions. It does not establish reserve requirements. Treasury states that reserve rules fall under other provisions of the GENIUS Act administered by the primary federal payment stablecoin regulators, and will be addressed separately.

Two categories of permitted issuer

• Permitted payment stablecoin issuers, as that term is defined in the GENIUS Act itself.
• Foreign payment stablecoin issuers that satisfy the criteria in Section 18(a) of the Act — including being regulated by a foreign regulator operating a comparable regime, and being registered with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

Treasury reads the statute as permitting a qualifying foreign issuer to issue directly into the US market rather than routing through an additional domestic intermediary. That is a substantive interpretive choice, and one that comment letters are likely to test.

The conditions attached to foreign issuers

Foreign issuers face two gating requirements under the proposal. They must demonstrate the technological capability to comply with lawful orders, and they must satisfy the reciprocal arrangement provisions in Section 18 of the Act. Digital asset service providers operating in the United States would not be permitted to offer a foreign stablecoin unless its issuer meets those conditions.

Treasury also proposes a route by which a foreign issuer located outside the United States can avoid liability: reasonably believing that recipients are not located in the US, implementing controls to detect user location, and refraining from advertising targeted at US persons. This is a familiar structure from other cross-border financial regulation, adapted to tokens that move on public networks.

The dates that matter

• July 18, 2025 — GENIUS Act enacted.
• January 18, 2027 — certain provisions of the framework take effect, per Treasury.
• July 18, 2028 — the prohibition on domestic digital asset service providers offering non-compliant stablecoins takes effect, three years after enactment.
• The proposal includes a safe harbor giving pending applicants and certain subsidiaries up to 12 months from the Act's effective date to come into compliance.
• The prohibition relating to foreign stablecoins was effective upon enactment of the Act.

Treasury welcomes input from stakeholders as we work to provide the regulatory certainty businesses need to innovate and grow in America.

What it means in practice

For anyone holding or accepting a dollar-pegged token today, nothing changes on October 19. What changes is the shape of the market a couple of years out. The Act sets a hard date — July 18, 2028 — after which a US-based exchange or wallet provider cannot offer a stablecoin whose issuer sits outside the permitted categories. This proposal is Treasury's first attempt to draw the line between inside and outside. Comments are filed at regulations.gov and become part of the public record.