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U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order Tuesday directing regulators to study whether crypto and fintech firms should get direct access to Federal Reserve payment accounts, placing renewed pressure on the central bank’s control over who can connect to the U.S. payment system.
The order asks federal financial regulators to review rules, guidance, supervisory practices, and application processes that may limit fintech firms’ ability to partner with regulated institutions or seek bank charters, deposit insurance, licenses, and other approvals.
"The Federal Government must update regulations to allow integration of digital assets and innovative technology into traditional financial services and payment systems," Trump stated in the order. The directive also calls for removing "overly burdensome and fragmented regulations and supervisory practices that form barriers to entry and primarily benefit incumbent financial services firms."
Ari Redbord, Global Head of Policy and Government Affairs at blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs, called the order a “concrete step” towards putting the U.S. at the forefront of digital asset adoption. He framed digital asset dominance as an “American strategic interest,” pointing to the sector's explosive growth that has seen stablecoins achieve transaction volume of $33 trillion in 2025 and a market capitalization exceding $300 billion.
At issue is how much discretion the Fed should retain over access to its payment rails.
Master accounts are accounts held at the Federal Reserve that allow eligible institutions to settle payments directly through the central bank, instead of relying on another bank to move money through the U.S. financial system.
The order preserves the Fed’s formal independence because it requests for a review without forcing the central bank to grant access, Luke Nolan, senior researcher at CoinShares, told Decrypt.
“The pressure is somewhat real but it operates through optics, not any legal forcefullness,” Nolan said. “A public 120-day report deadline puts the Fed in a position where any denial has to be defended out loud.”
Concerns about Fed independence are limited, Nolan said, because “final authority on master account access still sits with the Fed, and the Executive Order doesn’t change that.”
“The more interesting concern in my view is the precedent,” he said. “The White House publicly weighing in on what has been treated as a supervisory and risk-management call is certainly different to what we are used to.”
Without the Fed loosening its own risk standards, the order is “largely political messaging,” Nolan said, though it still changes the process by shifting the burden onto the central bank to explain future denials.
As well as targeting barriers to entry and incumbent financial services firms, the order asks the Federal Reserve to evaluate whether uninsured depository institutions and nonbank firms, including digital asset companies, can access Reserve Bank payment accounts and services.
The move places the question of Fed access “formally on the table,” Wesley Rios, U.S. and partnerships lead at Morph, told Decrypt, noting that any real path for crypto firms still depends on whether the Fed changes its access standards and sees “enough legal clarity” for nonbank firms.
The order could also be seen as a sign that master account access is becoming part of a wider policy debate over how crypto firms should connect to core U.S. financial infrastructure.
Given its focus on payment access and regulatory integration, the order could “indirectly accelerate tokenization” by creating “a much smoother path for tokenized assets to interact with traditional markets,” Dan Dadybayo, strategy lead at crypto infrastructure developer Horizontal Systems, told Decrypt.
Platforms focused on tokenized treasuries, securities, and settlement infrastructure could “benefit disproportionately” if the review leads to easier links between fintech firms and payment infrastructure, Dadybayo said.
“For most of crypto’s history, the industry built systems outside traditional financial infrastructure,” he said. “This potentially marks the beginning of a different phase from crypto outside the system to crypto inside the rails.”
The Federal Reserve has already begun granting limited access to crypto firms, with the Kansas City Fed approving a "limited purpose account" for Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, in March 2026.
The move came after the Fed’s board of governors last year mooted "skinny" master accounts designed to enable access for select firms, marking a departure from the central bank's historically restrictive stance toward digital asset companies seeking direct payment system access.
To date, crypto companies including Coinbase, Circle, Ripple, Paxos, the Stripe-owned Bridge and Crypto.com have received conditional approval for national trust bank charters from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. The approval enables them to offer some bank-like services including federally regulated digital asset custody, staking, and trade settlement. In a letter to the OCC yesterday, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) argued that the approvals violated the National Bank Act and pose "serious risks" to the safety of the U.S. banking system.
Trump-linked DeFi firm World Liberty Financial also has a pending application which Warren has urged Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan Gould to either reject or review, describing it as being "at the center of perhaps the most disgraceful Presidential corruption scandal in U.S. history."
This article has been updated with additional comments.
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