A subsidiary of Japan's Sony Financial Group has won preliminary approval from a US regulator to issue a dollar-backed stablecoin. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) allowed Sony Bank to set up a trust bank, Connectia Trust, National Association, with $40 million in starting capital.
Sony is the sixth major financial or crypto player to receive a federal trust charter from the OCC over the past year. Circle, Ripple, BitGo, Fidelity Digital Assets and Paxos went through the same process before it. The dollar stablecoin market has already topped $308 billion in value, and Sony has not yet announced a name for its own token.
What the OCC actually approved
The OCC granted preliminary, or conditional, approval on July 2. This is not a standard banking license. A national trust charter lets a firm custody client assets, manage reserves and issue stablecoins under federal supervision, but bars it from taking deposits or making loans. The regulator used a similar path for Circle and Paxos. A company first receives conditional approval, then goes through a review of its operating procedures, and only after that can it launch.
Sony Bank has not yet named a lead for the new unit. No business activity will start until the regulator signs off on the remaining conditions.
$40 million in capital, launch targeted for 2027
Connectia Trust will be established this month. Full operations, including the token launch, are not expected before 2027: Sony still has to meet all of the OCC's outstanding requirements on reserve structure and controls. For Circle and Ripple, more than a year passed between conditional approval and final launch.
The project exists only because of the GENIUS Act, passed last year. It set federal reserve and disclosure rules for dollar-pegged tokens, without which the OCC would likely not be reviewing applications like this one at all.
Why Sony wants its own dollar token
Sony sees the stablecoin as a way to cut payment fees across its own lineup of services. US customers would be able to pay for PlayStation games, Crunchyroll subscriptions and other digital content with the token instead of using standard cards. No major franchise has publicly committed to the plan yet. The token still has no name.
This is not Sony's first crypto venture. In early 2025, the company launched an Ethereum-based layer-2 network called Soneium, and its partner Startale rolled out a separate dollar stablecoin on that network late last year. For the new token, Connectia Trust will hand issuance and custody to infrastructure firm Bastion.
In March, Sony Bank also signed a memorandum of understanding with yen stablecoin issuer JPYC Inc. to study whether a yen-pegged token could be connected directly to the bank's deposit rails. The dollar project in the US looks like part of a wider strategy spanning several markets at once.
Sony joins a line of banks and fintechs seeking trust charters
In December, the OCC already granted conditional charters to Circle, Ripple, BitGo, Fidelity Digital Assets and Paxos. Applications keep coming in. Even World Liberty Financial, a project tied to the Trump family, is among the applicants. Each charter lets a company operate under direct federal oversight instead of collecting licenses state by state, which is the main draw for tech giants inside the OCC's structure.
A similar shift is visible among traditional banks too. A week earlier, Standard Chartered struck a deal with USDC issuer Circle to let clients mint the token directly without opening separate accounts. Sony becomes another example of legacy conglomerates trying to build stablecoins into their own payment infrastructure rather than leaving the market to crypto-native firms.
Pushback from banking lobbyists and Senator Warren
Sony's application ran into opposition back in November. The Independent Community Bankers of America urged the OCC to reject it. The group argues that a trust-issued stablecoin effectively mimics a bank deposit without the insurance and rules that bind ordinary banks. Senator Elizabeth Warren has publicly said the regulator is improperly granting charters to firms that don't qualify under the National Bank Act.
The Digital Chamber, a trade group representing more than 250 crypto companies, pushed back on that criticism in May.
"That criticism misreads both the statute and the OCC's longstanding charter authority."
- Cody Carbone, CEO, Digital Chamber, comment from May 2026
According to Decrypt, the banking lobby is weighing a lawsuit over the charters themselves.
What it means for the stablecoin market
For now, Connectia Trust exists only on paper. Conditional approval does not let Sony start operating, and the OCC's final sign-off could stretch out to 2027. Still, the application shows where competition over dollar tokens is heading.
Crypto exchanges are no longer the only players in this race; tech and financial conglomerates with user bases in the hundreds of millions are joining too. Ripple, for what it's worth, got a similar charter back in December and is now building infrastructure around XRP. The broader regulatory picture remains unsettled. Galaxy Digital analysts put the odds of the CLARITY Act passing in 2026 at just 50%, with a House hearing scheduled for July 17.
Some of the resistance traces back to big banks too. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon told Fox Business that banks will keep fighting the current version of the CLARITY Act, arguing crypto companies that want to offer yield-bearing products should apply for banking charters instead of working around the rules through trusts. The bill cleared the Senate Banking Committee back in May but ran into pushback from Democrats and the banking lobby, and the Senate itself breaks for a four-week recess on Aug. 8.
If the GENIUS Act stays in its current form, the number of similar applications is unlikely to shrink in the coming years, and competition for dollar tokens between banks, tech firms and crypto-native issuers will only intensify.
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