Bank lobby targets stablecoin yield and open banking in policy push

Under one rulebook, U.S. lawmaker as lawmakers work to unify crypto and traditional finance. S S. The Congress is being pressured by banks to narrow down how digital dollars earn returns and how financial data gets shared with the media.

The American Bankers Association’s (ABA) 2026 policy priorities call for banning yield on payment stablecoins and revising open banking rules to promote what it calls consumer protection and competitive balance.

Critics – mostly in the crypto and fintech industry – say that this approach would tilt the playing field towards banks by restricting how users can access crypto wallets, stablecoin issuers and Fintech apps at an important point for U.S. technology. S. crypto control, paraphrasingr.

And that’s where those positions stand as the Senate struggles to push a broad crypto market structure bill which would define how federal regulators control digital asset markets. Stablecoin yield is one of the most controversial issues in those negotiations, contributing to last week’s delay of a key Senate Banking Committee markup after Coinbase withdrew support.

ABA and large bank executives have warned that yield-bearing tokens could be used as alternative to bank deposits, withdraw funding from the banking system and reduce lending capacity on stablecoins. The risk has been cited by bank leaders, such as Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan, to trillions of dollars in potential deposit outflows if stablecoin rewards are not explicitly curtailed in the market structure legislation.

This is a more nuanced but closely related open banking battle with , which has been the most closely linked and highly connected fight for an open bank. Section 1033 is designed to allow consumers to freely share their financial data with third-party services, a critical on-ramp for crypto wallets, stablecoin apps and exchanges.

While banks have urged for revisions to clarify the liability and standards of access to data, fintech and crypto groups say those changes would allow banks to charge fees or restrictions that undermine open banking in practice.

Neither fights refer to the same objective as for the ABA, which is why both fighters point to this goal. The group is urging to ensure that crypto’s integration into the financial system happens on bank-defined terms by tightening up the rules around stablecoin yield and reshaping how open banking is implemented.

The ABA’s plan, which hash out the market structure bill as lawmakers have passed it, says that “the banking industry wants digital dollars and data flows to sit well inside the regulated banking perimeter.”

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