Sean Neville’s Catena Gets Conditional Approval for AI Bank

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency granted preliminary conditional approval on Sept. 18 for Catena Trust Bank, N.A., a proposed New York national trust bank led by Sean Neville, the former principal architect of USDC. The bank would provide custody, payment, conversion and other financial services for companies using artificial intelligence agents.

Catena Trust Bank is wholly owned by Catena Labs, where Neville is chairman, president and chief executive officer. The proposed bank would handle fiat currencies, securities and digital assets, including payment stablecoins that comply with the GENIUS Act once the law takes effect.

The approval does not allow the bank to begin operations. Catena must meet the OCC’s preopening requirements, and the regulator can modify, suspend or withdraw the approval before granting final authorization. The bank must raise at least $10 million in Tier 1 capital, keep eligible liquid assets equal to the greater of 50% of that capital or $5 million, and hold liquid assets covering 180 days of operating expenses.

The OCC gave Catena 12 months to raise the required capital and 18 months to open the bank. If either deadline is missed, the approval expires unless the regulator grants an extension. A national trust bank can provide fiduciary services and manage assets, but it cannot accept demand deposits or make loans. Until the charter is final, Catena operates through regulated partners.

Catena is developing financial infrastructure for software agents that can buy services, send payments and manage accounts for businesses. Its platform includes identity checks, spending limits, counterparty restrictions and controls that allow companies to suspend an agent or block transactions.

The company supports USDC on the Arc blockchain, Open Standard’s $OUSD and x402 payments for internet services. Customers can convert fiat into USDC, hold the funds and send them on Arc under the platform’s approval controls. Catena also participates in Mastercard’s Agent Pay for Machines initiative, which is designed for payments made by software-controlled systems.

Catena’s open-source Agent Commerce Kit, or ACK, provides protocols and patterns for agent identity and payments. An updated version proposes using JOSE grants and HTTP message signatures instead of W3C Verifiable Credentials. It also includes a payment profile for x402 transactions.

Catena describes four control layers: safeguards within the AI agent, customer governance rules, signer policies enforced through secure hardware, and smart contracts on a blockchain. The structure is designed to prevent an agent from moving funds solely on the basis of its own instructions.

Neville co-founded Circle with Jeremy Allaire in 2013 and served as the company’s chief technology officer and president until December 2019. Circle and the Centre consortium launched USDC on Sept. 26, 2018, as a digital representation of the U.S. dollar issued under shared standards. Neville remained on Circle’s board after leaving its executive leadership.

Neville and former Circle engineering executive Matt Venables formed a venture studio in 2021. The group later focused on financial systems for artificial intelligence agents and launched Catena Labs in May 2025 with an $18 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto fund. Catena disclosed a $30 million Series A in May 2026, bringing its reported funding to $48 million.

Neville told Fortune in 2025 that Catena did not plan to issue its own cryptocurrency or stablecoin. The platform uses existing dollar-based assets, including USDC, $OUSD and fiat currencies, while the proposed trust bank would provide a regulated structure for custody and payment services.