The Clearing House Association (TCH) submitted comments in response to the Treasury Department’s notice and request for comment on “Ensuring Responsible Development of Digital Assets” and digital-asset-related illicit finance and national security risks. In its letter, TCH addressed digital-asset-related illicit finance and national security risks, ways to mitigate these risks, the Treasury Department’s “Action Plan to Address Illicit Financing Risks of Digital Assets” (Action Plan), and ways in which to support anti-money-laundering/countering-the-financing-of-terrorism (AML/CFT) controls in the design of a potential U.S. CBDC. With regard to privately-issued digital assets and private token-based cryptocurrency, TCH opined that a comprehensive federal prudential framework applying standards to digital assets service providers that are equivalent to those that apply to depository financial institutions when engaged in functionally similar activities is essential. TCH also commented that banks, which are subject to comprehensive regulatory and supervisory frameworks, should be no less able to engage in digital-asset-related activities than nonbanks.

“The Clearing House has released a research paper that analyzes the legal authority and policy considerations for banks’ engagement in stablecoin-related activities.The TCH paper provides information about the legal authority of insured depository institutions to issue stablecoins and engage in stablecoin-related activities, and notes that: The OCC’s 2020 and 2021 letters concluding that national banks have the clear legal authority to issue and exchange stablecoins are soundly based on language in the National Bank Act, and consistent with numerous legal decisions and regulatory determinations regarding a bank’s authority to issue payments and deposit instruments. National banks have always been permitted to develop innovative deposit and payment mechanisms, as receiving deposits and acting as financial intermediaries are core functions of banks. Notwithstanding that the OCC’s “transparency doctrine” focuses on the authority of a national bank to offer a product or service, rather than how the service is delivered, and stablecoin issuance by banks and stablecoin-related activities constitute a new means of accepting, holding and transferring deposits, there has been no public statement of approval granting a federally-insured bank the ability to issue a customer-facing stablecoin.”

“Open Invention Network (OIN), the organization formed to safeguard open source software (OSS) and now the largest patent non-aggression community in history, announced today that The Clearing House (TCH) has joined as a community member. As the nation’s most experienced payments company, operating U.S.-based payments networks that clear and settle more than $2 trillion each day through wire, ACH, check image and real-time payments, TCH is reinforcing its commitment to OSS as an enabler of advanced financial services payment platforms.”

“Tokenization for deposit and checking account information, which ensures a customer’s banking account and routing numbers are never transmitted along with a payment, will soon be available for financial institutions that utilize the RTP® and EPN networks, the real-time payments and Automated Clearing House (ACH) networks operated by The Clearing House.  Secure Token Exchange (STE) for customer deposit and checking accounts is a new, optional capability currently available for the RTP network that issues tokens for a customer’s bank account and routing numbers. These tokens can be used like real account numbers for transactions over the RTP network. This helps to reduce the instances of a customer’s bank account numbers being stored outside of their bank, such as with a fintech app, a biller, retailer, or other third parties. Customer deposit and checking account tokenization for EPN is targeting availability later this quarter.”