The US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has unveiled a 376-page proposal to implement the GENIUS Act, aiming to settle the debate over stablecoin yield. The draft rule explicitly bars supervised payment stablecoin issuers from paying interest or yield to holders. This regulatory move could clear a major obstacle for the separate CLARITY Act currently under debate in Congress.
The US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency released a detailed proposal to implement the GENIUS Act. The 376-page draft is open for public comment for 60 days following its publication.
The proposed rule would prohibit permitted payment stablecoin issuers from paying any yield “solely in connection with the holding, use, or retention” of a stablecoin. This directly implements section 4(a)(11) of the GENIUS Act, which was enacted in July 2025.
The proposal also creates a rebuttable presumption that paying yield to an affiliate, which then pays yield to holders, violates the ban. Thania Charmani, partner at law firm Winston & Strawn, commented on X that the OCC proposed to “resolve the debate on stablecoin yield through rulemaking.”
She further stated this could allow the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025 (CLARITY) to “proceed without that provision.” The CLARITY Act has been a point of contention over whether digital asset service providers should be able to pay rewards on stablecoin balances.
By establishing a no-yield baseline for OCC-supervised stablecoins, the proposal draws a clear regulatory line. For firms like Coinbase that have argued for regulated yield offerings, the message is that yield and GENIUS-compliant stablecoins are incompatible under the proposed framework.
The OCC’s draft includes two explicit carve-outs from the yield prohibition. It does not prevent merchants from independently offering discounts for using payment stablecoins.
Furthermore, it does not bar an issuer from sharing profits from a stablecoin with a non-affiliate partner in a whitelabel arrangement. The agency emphasized the “close nexus” between issuer payments and end‑holder yield in its proposal.
