Stabledash Live · Oct 14 · 30 min

Agora Just Got Approved by the OCC. Here's Why Companies Are Coming Onchain

With Nick Van Eck

Key takeaways

Agora received conditional approval from the OCC to organize Agora National Trust Bank, which Nick van Eck says took about a year of work after its Series A.
Van Eck says the charter moves Agora from a stablecoin issuer to a one-stop shop, built on zero off-ramp fees and shared revenue.
He says stablecoins were only one basis point of $1.6 quadrillion in global B2B payments last year and would need to grow 7000x to take the whole market.

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0:00Agora wins conditional OCC approval for a national trust bank1 of 11

Summary

CEO Nick van Eck says the charter turns Agora from a stablecoin issuer into a one-stop shop for enterprises that were waiting for US regulatory clarity.

Agora received conditional approval from the OCC on Friday to organize Agora National Trust Bank, CEO Nick van Eck said. He described the approval as about a year's worth of work behind the scenes, starting after the company completed its Series A last year. In his view, the company had 12-18 months to become a federal bank, which he called a tremendous amount of work.

From issuer to platform

Van Eck says the charter will move Agora from being just a stablecoin issuer, where third parties build on its token, to offering the one-stop shop where companies can build their business and soon run it on the platform. The economic model stays the same: "we share the revenue. There's zero off ramp fees." He describes Agora as a technology layer rather than a lender taking balance sheet risk, saying it is "just delivering, like, a better settlement technology."

The company is also moving its office from Jersey City to the Financial District in New York within the next month.

“Genius is one of the most important pieces of banking legislation in American history”

Nick Van Eck

Customers waiting on clearance

According to van Eck, a number of providers, ranging from publicly traded companies to the Fortune 25 and Fortune 50, have been waiting for Agora to get US approval, with announcements expected in the coming weeks and months. Telecoms working with Iris already log into Agora and use USDI, which Agora built for them. He says Veeva Bolivia will have 2,000,000 plus daily active users once USDI fully rolls out.

Insomniac, part of Live Nation, is set to use RAIN and other loyalty programs. Van Eck notes that Live Nation alone had 159,000,000 event attendees last year, compared with about 39,000,000 wallets holding over $10 in stablecoins. He believes 90 to 95% of the market has been waiting for regulation.

The size of the prize

Van Eck says the big prize is being one of the five to 10 global multi-utility liquid issuers, in a $16 trillion plus eurodollar market. He points to idle balances as a target, noting the average US checking account has earned about seven basis points over the past twenty years. Stablecoin B2B payments grew eight x from 2024 to $226 million last year, he says, yet remain one basis point of global volume.

What he got wrong

Van Eck admits he did not think the GENIUS Act would pass, and now calls it "one of the most important pieces of banking legislation in American history." Adoption came faster than he expected, bringing new competition. He says Stripe buying Bridge was not on his bingo card and changed competitive dynamics.

Van Eck's case is that the regulatory shift has arrived and the enterprise market came with it. He predicts stablecoin neobanks as a segment will keep growing, though he rejects the idea of one for every vertical. He bets Agora can win with shared revenue, zero off-ramp fees and a bank charter rather than with lending.

Agora, Iris, OCC, and Rain come up most.

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