On July 24, 2026, a U.S. banking regulator called the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) denied Wise Group plc's request to set up its own specially licensed bank in the United States. Wise is a London-based payments company known for cheap international money transfers. The denial blocks the company from creating Wise National Trust, a type of bank that would have had federal banking privileges without taking everyday customer deposits. Wise shared the news through a regulatory filing with the SEC. Stocktitan

Wise started down this path in mid-2025. An OCC document dated June 16, 2025, showed the company asking for approval to operate this special type of bank. By April 2026, Wise's UK prospectus formally confirmed the plan to establish Wise National Trust. Reuters

The big reason Wise wanted this license was to get direct access to the Federal Reserve's payment systems. Think of it like having your own account at the central bank, so you can move money without paying a middleman. Right now, Wise has to rely on partner banks to handle payments in U.S. dollars. Direct Fed access would have cut out that middleman, saving money and making transfers faster for Wise's 19 million customers. The OCC's denial means that shortcut stays closed. Investing.com

Wise's current U.S. business is unaffected by the decision. The company has processed over $240 billion in payments for about 19 million customers globally, according to the filing. The denial only affects Wise's push for direct infrastructure access, not the partner-bank setup it uses today. Stocktitan

The timing is a bit confusing because the OCC has been saying yes to similar requests from other companies. In December 2025, the OCC approved five national trust bank applications under certain conditions. Then in February 2026, the OCC noted it had approved several more trust bank charters for companies that hold digital and traditional assets for clients. OCC OCC

Wise told the OCC it plans to try again under a new law called the GENIUS Act, according to a report published July 24, 2026. The GENIUS Act is a framework for regulating digital assets and stablecoins (a type of cryptocurrency pegged to a stable value like the U.S. dollar). It might give Wise a different route to get what it wants. But no one knows yet whether the same problem that sank the first application — the issue of Federal Reserve access — would come up again. Investing.com

Here is the key tension: the OCC grants bank charters, but the Federal Reserve decides separately who gets direct access to its payment systems. These are two different agencies with two different processes, and the gap between them is where Wise's application appears to have stalled. The OCC was approving trust charters for companies that hold assets for clients, but Wise's business is different — it moves money across borders at high volume. That may have raised different concerns for regulators weighing whether to let Wise plug directly into the Fed.

Wise's plan to reapply under the GENIUS Act suggests the company sees this as a setback for one specific application, not a rejection of what it does. The new filing, when it happens, will be the first test of whether that law can solve the problem that stopped the first attempt.