Overview
- Representative Maxine Waters, the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, sent a letter Thursday to Kansas City Fed President Jeff Schmid seeking details on Kraken Financial’s approval and setting an April 10 deadline.
- The Kansas City Fed said it received the inquiry and would review it, and it declined to share account specifics because of confidentiality rules.
- Kraken Financial holds a limited-purpose master account that can provide direct use of Federal Reserve payment rails such as Fedwire, while excluding interest on reserves and access to the Fed’s emergency lending window.
- Waters wrote that neither federal law nor the Fed’s Account Access Guidelines recognize a “limited purpose account” and she asked for the legal basis, permitted services, usage limits such as overdrafts or balance caps, and the AML and consumer-protection reviews that were applied.
- The outcome could set a template for nonbank access to core payments as the Fed Board drafts a formal restricted-account framework and as other crypto firms, including Custodia, Anchorage Digital Bank, and Standard Custody, continue to seek similar access.