Fiserv's press release on 1 October calls Roughrider Coin a "dollar-backed stablecoin". Bank of North Dakota, the state bank whose name is on the coin, calls it "a U.S. dollar-backed token deposit designed exclusively for bank-to-bank transactions". Under the GENIUS Act those two descriptions are mutually exclusive, and which one is right decides who regulates it.
The launch itself is real. Fiserv's Digital Asset Platform went into production with Roughrider as its "first live use case", running on Solana with VersaBank as issuer and Fireblocks doing custody. The headlines around it are less reliable. TechTimes ran "Fiserv Stablecoin Platform Activates 10,000 Banks" with "400ms settlement" replacing "overnight ACH". All three claims are wrong, and why they are wrong is the useful part.
How Many Banks Are Live on Fiserv's Digital Asset Platform?
Four. Fiserv's release says more than 90 North Dakota banks and credit unions take part. BND told The Dakotan that the token moved from testing into production with four pilot institutions, and that access to the wider group "is being introduced gradually" with no date for expansion. The 10,000 figure is Fiserv's whole client base, which the TechTimes body text concedes even though the headline does not.
(The Dakotan dates the production move to 3 October, not 1 October.) BND's Roughrider page adds that the public cannot hold the token at all. It is interbank only, voluntary, and approved as a pilot by the North Dakota Industrial Commission.
| Party | Role |
|---|---|
| Bank of North Dakota | Sponsor and governance, "oversight role" |
| VersaBank USA, N.A. | Issuer: minting, burning, custody, reserve management |
| Fiserv | Platform; banks access it through Commercial Center, its commercial online banking product |
| Fireblocks | MPC wallets, tokenisation, automated policy controls |
| Solana | Transaction processing |
VersaBank USA holds an OCC national bank charter, acquired through the purchase of Stearns Bank Holdingford in Minnesota in 2024. That detail is what makes the "deposit" reading plausible.
Is Roughrider Coin a Stablecoin or a Tokenised Deposit?
The GENIUS Act (P.L. 119-27, signed 18 July 2025) defines "payment stablecoin" and then carves out of it, in §2(22)(B)(ii), any deposit under the Federal Deposit Insurance Act, "including a deposit recorded using distributed ledger technology". A tokenised deposit stays inside bank regulation. A payment stablecoin needs a permitted issuer, 1:1 reserves in the assets the Act lists, and monthly reserve disclosure.
Read the full article on tomcn.uk →
About the Author
I'm Tom Wang, an AI Developer & Fintech Developer — building AI agents, crypto payment infrastructure, and cross-border payout systems with Rust, Go, and TypeScript. Based in London, UK.
Currently open to new opportunities in fintech, crypto payments, and AI agent engineering.
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