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Carlin McCrory

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A seasoned regulatory and compliance attorney, Carlin brings extensive experience representing financial institutions, fintechs, lenders, payment processors, neobanks, virtual currency companies, and mortgage servicers.

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The Road to Housing Act takes aim at one of the most persistent pain points in community banking: the risk that everyday deposit relationships — particularly those involving custodial arrangements and reciprocal deposit networks — get swept into the regulatory definition of “brokered deposits.” Sections 901 and 902 of the legislation offer meaningful, targeted relief, providing both structural clarity for institutions that rely on payment services arrangements and expanded safe harbors for reciprocal deposit programs. For community banks, these changes could meaningfully expand deposit stability without triggering the heightened regulatory scrutiny that brokered deposit classification brings.

On May 12, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) issued a significant interpretive letter confirming that Fidelity Digital Assets, National Association (the recently converted national trust bank formerly known as Fidelity Digital Assets Service, LLC) is not required to hold state money transmitter licenses to conduct its federally authorized activities. The OCC concluded that the National Bank Act preempts any state money transmitter licensing requirement as applied to a national bank.

Federal regulators recently took two coordinated steps that significantly shift expectations for how lenders and banks treat non‑work authorized individuals and their employers. On June 5, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB or Bureau) issued a formal statement on how immigration status should factor into ability‑to‑repay determinations under the Truth in Lending Act (TILA) and Regulation Z. On the same day, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), jointly with the federal banking agencies and in coordination with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), released a detailed advisory on fraud, payroll schemes, and money laundering risks associated with the unlawful employment of non-work authorized persons, including specific guidance regarding the use of Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITINs) and Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs).

On May 20, the Federal Reserve Board issued a proposal (following a December 2025 Request for Information) to create a new, special-purpose “payment account” that eligible financial institutions could use solely to clear and settle payments. At the same time, the Board signaled that Federal Reserve Banks should temporarily pause decisions on certain master account applications from higher-risk institutions while this policy work proceeds.

On Thursday, May 14, at 10:30 a.m., the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee will meet in executive session to mark up H.R. 3633, the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025 (the CLARITY Act). The session is a key procedural step for this comprehensive digital asset market structure legislation that, if enacted, would create a new federal framework for how crypto markets are regulated, supervised, and policed for fraud, illicit finance, and other purposes.

On April 10, the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) jointly issued a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) setting out their view of how sanctions, anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) compliance requirements should apply to permitted payment stablecoin issuers (PPSIs) under the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act. The agencies also issued an accompanying fact sheet.

Yesterday, U.S. Representatives Young Kim (R-CA) and Sam Liccardo (D-CA) introduced the Payments Access and Consumer Efficiency Act of 2026 (PACE Act). The bill would create an optional federal framework for large state‑regulated payment companies, giving qualifying firms Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) supervision and potential direct access to Federal Reserve payment rails, in exchange for bank‑like prudential and customer‑protection standards. It is an early‑stage proposal with uncertain prospects but significant implications for nonbank payments and bank–fintech partnerships.

On February 11, the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) released a proposed rule to implement the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act (the GENIUS Act) for federally insured credit unions (FICUs). Under the proposal, credit unions cannot issue payment stablecoins directly. Instead, only NCUA‑licensed “permitted payment stablecoin issuers” (PPSIs) that are subsidiaries of FICUs would be allowed to issue payment stablecoins, and FICUs would be limited to investing only in PPSIs licensed by the NCUA.

On December 16, the Federal Reserve Board issued a Request for Information on a new special‑purpose “Payment Account” prototype, which is essentially a stripped‑down Federal Reserve Bank account designed for institutions focused on payments innovation. The goal with this specialized or “skinny” access is to give legally eligible, payments‑centric institutions a more predictable and lower‑risk path to access key Federal Reserve payment services, without changing who is legally eligible for Federal Reserve master accounts.