Ramp Applies for US National Bank Trust Charter

Ramp applied on October 16 to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for a Ramp national bank trust charter, a day after announcing a $1.85 billion funding round at a $60 billion valuation.

The corporate card and spend management company said it filed to establish Ramp National Trust Bank, and announced the application on Monday, October 19, in a post on X. If the OCC approves, the trust bank would offer fiduciary investment management and custody of digital assets.

For finance teams, the charter would not turn Ramp into a deposit-taking bank. Ramp said the trust bank would not take deposits or make commercial loans. Company cash would not sit in a Ramp-owned bank account under federal deposit insurance, and the credit lines Ramp’s customers use would stay where they are.

Ramp currently relies on partner banks for its business checking and investment account. The filing is a bid to bring investment management and digital asset custody under one federal regulator. Ramp said the charter would place these services “under a consistent federal regulatory framework.”

What a Ramp national bank trust charter permits

A national trust bank is a federally chartered institution that holds and manages assets for others. It acts as a fiduciary, which means it owes legal duties to the clients whose money or securities it handles.

The application covers two activities. The first is fiduciary investment management, in which the bank invests client funds under a mandate. The second is custody of digital assets, in which the bank holds the keys and records for assets such as stablecoins and other tokens.

What the charter does not cover is as important. Ramp National Trust Bank would not accept deposits and would not make commercial loans. It would sit apart from the lending and card business that produces most of Ramp’s revenue.

Ramp’s announcement does not say which customer products the charter would support. The company has not published a launch date for the planned custody services.

Why Ramp wants a national trust bank charter

The filing fits the direction Ramp has taken since it began as a corporate card. It now sells spend management, bill payment, accounting automation and a business account. Its $1.85 billion round led by Dragoneer gave it fresh capital to build outward from that base.

A trust charter gives Ramp a direct route into the two services it named. Investment management for corporate cash is the nearer neighbour of its existing product, since it already offers an investment account through partner banks. Custody of digital assets would let it hold stablecoins and other tokens for business customers under its own licence rather than a third party’s.

A federal charter can also reduce dependence on outside providers. Holding custody inside a regulated Ramp entity would mean fewer intermediaries between a business’s balance and the rules that govern it. Whether Ramp intends to use it for treasury, stablecoin payments or both is not stated in its announcement.

Finance leaders weighing spend management software should treat the filing as a statement of direction, not a product. Nothing changes for current customers until the OCC rules and Ramp launches something.

Fintechs line up for OCC trust charters

Ramp is not alone. Block, Avant and Modern Treasury have also sought OCC charters in the past two months. These companies want access to Federal Reserve accounts and payment rails, which a federal charter can open.

Crypto firms have been the main beneficiaries so far. The OCC has granted conditional approvals to Circle, Ripple, Paxos and BitGo. A conditional approval is not a final one, and none of those decisions authorises Ramp.

Ramp’s case differs in one respect. It is a spend management company with a large base of business customers, rather than a crypto-native firm. The Ramp application tests whether the OCC will grant a national trust bank charter to a finance software company for custody and investment management alongside its core business.

Banks push back on trust charter approvals

The Independent Community Bankers of America sued the OCC on October 2. It argues that the surge in trust charter applications and approvals creates “a gaping hole in financial regulation.”

The trade group says the OCC has approved or conditionally approved 21 national trust charters since the start of President Trump’s second term, 13 of them for crypto companies. It also argues there is “no statutory basis” for chartering crypto trust banks that are neither depository nor fiduciary.

Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan Gould has defended the approvals. At a May event he said “we don’t have a zero risk tolerance anymore,” and that the statute refers to “a reasonable chance of success.”

Ji Hun Kim, chief executive of the Crypto Council for Innovation, called the lawsuit “a clear attempt to resist national trust charters.” He said restricting banking to legacy models would not stop demand for financial innovation.

The outcome of the lawsuit could shape how fast the OCC works through applications such as Ramp’s. A ruling against the agency would put the whole approval pipeline in doubt.

What happens to customer funds and what comes next

A trust bank holding assets in a fiduciary capacity keeps client property separate from its own balance sheet. That is the main protection. It is different from deposit insurance, which a trust bank that takes no deposits would not provide.

Finance teams should therefore read any future Ramp custody product as an asset safekeeping arrangement, not a bank account. The questions to ask are where assets are held, how they are segregated and what happens in a failure. Those answers will come from Ramp’s disclosures and the terms of any OCC approval.

The OCC has set no public timeline for deciding the application. Ramp has no confirmed launch date for the services. The next markers are the OCC’s decision on Ramp National Trust Bank and the court’s handling of the ICBA suit.