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The Oakland payments company behind Square and Cash App, which has run regulated digital asset services for about eight years under more than 50 state licences, and which applied on 4 September 2026 to charter Builders Bank and Trust, N.A., an uninsured national trust bank in Sioux Falls that would custody bitcoin and settle stablecoins.
Block describes itself in its own charter application as a global financial technology company incorporated in Delaware in June 2009 and founded by Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey, whose purpose is economic empowerment and which operates connected ecosystems spanning commerce solutions, financial services, software, hardware and networks, reaching individuals and small businesses mainly through Cash App and the Square seller network. The digital asset business is not new and is not small: the application says Block has operated regulated digital asset services for approximately eight years and currently conducts them under more than 50 state money transmitter and virtual currency licences, that Cash App Bitcoin and Square Bitcoin facilitated approximately $10.7bn in annual bitcoin transaction volume in fiscal year 2025, and that as of the second quarter of 2026 the company served approximately two million digital-asset monthly transacting actives through Cash App. The proposed bank, Builders Bank and Trust, N.A., would be a de novo non-depository national bank, wholly owned by Block through two intermediate holding companies, with its main office in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, no physical branches, no federal deposit insurance and no lending. Its four proposed activities are custody and safekeeping of bitcoin and other digital assets, consolidating Block's existing custody operations under a federal charter; execution of customer buy and sell orders on a riskless principal basis; execution of customer instructions to deposit, withdraw and transfer digital assets; and stablecoin settlement and transfer services. Lee Woolley, Block's digital asset strategy lead, is the proposed chair, president, chief executive and chief fiduciary officer, alongside four other organisers who are also the initial directors. Block will capitalise the bank in full, and the amount is not public: the business plan and the capital discussion sit in a confidential exhibit volume for which Block requested treatment under FOIA Exemption 4. The register files Block as a payment provider rather than a bank on the reasoning used for Revolut on 5 September, that the company has a real present-tense business the register can name and the proposed bank has not begun the business of banking.
Developments in which Block, Inc. is a named party, newest first.
The company behind Square and Cash App filed to charter Builders Bank and Trust, an uninsured national trust bank in Sioux Falls that would custody bitcoin, execute customer orders and settle stablecoins.
Block, Inc. published the public volume of a charter application to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for Builders Bank & Trust, N.A., an uninsured national trust bank in Sioux Falls that would custody digital assets, execute customer orders on a riskless principal basis and settle stablecoins. The volume carries one public exhibit and seven confidential ones, and no capital figure.
What issued, what settled, what the supervisors changed, with the numbers behind it and a note on what the numbers do not show. One email, Thursday mornings.
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