Sony Bank's $40M Stablecoin Trust Faces Banking-Commerce Objections

Sony Bank won conditional approval from the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to set up a national trust bank that would issue dollar-pegged stablecoins. The subsidiary, Connectia Trust, National Association, will be wholly owned by Sony Bank and capitalized at $40 million, Sony said in a disclosure reported this week. Formation is slated for this month, commercial operations are not expected until 2027.

The trust is being set up “in preparation for the commercialization of businesses related to the issuance and management of U.S. dollar-denominated stablecoins in the United States,” Sony said. The filing did not name specific products or say whether Connectia would serve retail or institutional customers. Japan’s Nikkei reported last year that Sony expected US customers who play its video games and consume its other content to use stablecoins for subscriptions, giving the company a way to offset credit-card network fees.

Connectia joins a fast-growing line of firms seeking national trust charters under OCC chief Jonathan Gould. Circle and Ripple were among the first wave of approvals in December, along with Paxos. Large banks such as Morgan Stanley have pursued charters of their own. The structure has become the emerging federal path for stablecoin issuers under the GENIUS Act, the federal law that created a framework for permitted payment stablecoins. In June, FinCEN and federal banking regulators proposed customer-identification rules for issuers under it.

The approval is conditional, and it did not arrive unopposed. When Sony’s application went public in October, banking trade groups and consumer advocates pushed back. The Bank Policy Institute said in a comment letter that the application “raises questions regarding the longstanding … separation of banking and commerce.” The Independent Community Bankers of America warned in a November letter that the OCC’s receivership framework was “wholly unequipped to resolve an uninsured, systemically significant stablecoin issuer” like Connectia. The National Community Reinvestment Coalition wrote that approval would create “a two-tier system where digital asset firms receive comparable federal status without comparable public obligations.”

The venture’s structure is unusual. Roman Goldstein, a senior director at advisory firm Klaros Group, called it the “first commercial-conglomerate ecosystem bank” and flagged its cross-border structure. The OCC supervises the trust while Japan’s Financial Services Agency oversees the parent. “A foreign-owned bank with no Fed in the picture,” Goldstein wrote in a LinkedIn post. “The OCC didn’t dodge the banking-and-commerce objections, it just said that law permits this integration.”

Before Connectia can open, it must satisfy the OCC’s pre-opening conditions. Goldstein noted the regulator signalled it may at any point require the subsidiary to install a dedicated, full-time chief financial officer. The 2027 timeline leaves room for regulatory shifts, trade group litigation, or changes in the stablecoin market.