The GENIUS Act deadline passed. Here is the date that now matters.

The deadline came and went

The GENIUS Act was signed on 18 July 2025 as Public Law 119-27. It gave federal regulators one year to write the rules that make it work. That year ended on 18 July 2026, and the rules are not written.

Not one of the major rulemakings has been finalised. The Treasury, the OCC, the FDIC and the NCUA have all published proposals. Comment periods have opened, closed, and in two cases been extended. Nothing has been issued as final.

This is not a scandal and it is not unusual. The GENIUS Act asked four agencies plus the Treasury to coordinate on reserves, capital, liquidity, custody, redemption, insurance treatment, sanctions controls, licensing and transition rules — in twelve months. Financial rulemaking does not move at that speed. But the miss has a practical consequence, and it lands on anyone who has already started paying people in stablecoins.

What is still open

Every one of these carried an 18 July 2026 deadline to finalise. Every one of them is still a proposal.

Two of those dates are live this month. The FDIC's Bank Secrecy Act comment window closed on 4 August. The joint FinCEN customer-identification proposal is open until 21 August 2026 — the last chance to say anything on the record about how identity checks will work for stablecoin payment flows.

You are not the one being regulated

This is the part most coverage gets wrong, and it changes what you should actually do.

The GENIUS Act regulates payment stablecoin issuers. It sets who may issue a stablecoin to US persons, what reserves they must hold, how redemption works, and who supervises them. If your company pays salaries in USDC, you are not an issuer. You are a user of one.

That does not make you unaffected. It means your exposure is second-hand, and it arrives through three doors.

Which stablecoins stay permitted

The Act eventually restricts the offering of non-permitted payment stablecoins to US persons — a prohibition that bites three years after enactment, on 18 July 2028. Between now and then, the permitted-issuer list is being built. If you are paying US employees in a stablecoin whose issuer does not end up permitted, that is a migration you will have to run, on someone else's timetable.

What screening you are expected to perform

The AML, sanctions and customer-identification proposals are aimed at issuers and banks, but expectations flow downhill. A company sending payroll to 300 wallets in 40 countries is performing a financial activity, and the standard it will be measured against is being set right now in documents still marked “proposed.” Our guide to AML and sanctions screening for stablecoin payroll covers what that looks like in practice.

What your provider can prove

When the rules do land, your provider either has the reserve attestations, the screening logs and the audit trail, or it does not. You will not have time to build that yourself in a 120-day window.

The date that now matters: 18 January 2027

With the one-year deadline missed, the statute falls back to its own clock. The framework becomes effective on 18 January 2027, or 120 days after final primary regulations are issued — whichever comes first.

Read that carefully, because it cuts both ways. If regulators finalise nothing before late September 2026, the 18 January date governs and you have roughly five months. If they finalise in, say, October, the 120-day clock starts then and you have until February. If they finalise late, the January date still applies. The latest possible start is fixed; the earliest is not.

So the planning horizon is not “whenever the rules come out.” It is January, with the possibility of slightly later and no possibility of much later.

What to do in the next five months

None of this requires you to pause anything. It requires five specific answers.

1. Name your issuers. Write down which stablecoins your payroll actually touches, and who issues each one. Most finance teams cannot answer this in one sitting, which is itself the finding.
2. Ask each issuer where it stands. Has it applied, or stated an intent to apply, for permitted status? Under which regulator — federal, or a state framework it expects to be found “substantially similar”? Get it in writing.
3. Check your own US exposure separately. The restriction on non-permitted stablecoins is about offering them to US persons. A team paid entirely outside the US sits differently from one with employees in Texas. Separate the two populations now.
4. Ask your payroll provider for its evidence, not its opinion. Reserve attestations, sanctions-screening records, the retention period on transaction logs, and who signs off. A provider that answers with reassurance rather than documents has told you something.
5. Decide who owns this. Finance, legal, or people ops. Regulatory dates slip through organisations that have not named an owner, and a 120-day window is not long enough to find one.

What not to do

Do not wait for final rules before choosing a provider or a stablecoin. The proposals have been remarkably consistent on the parts that reach employers: permitted issuers, reserve backing, screening, records. The uncertainty is in the detail of capital and liquidity treatment for issuers, which is not your decision to make.

Do not assume today's issuer is tomorrow's permitted issuer. The permitted list does not exist yet. Anyone telling you their stablecoin is already approved under the GENIUS Act is describing a status no regulator has yet conferred.

Do not treat “still proposed” as “not coming.” The 18 January 2027 fallback is in the statute. It does not require a regulator to act.

Where Toku sits

Toku becomes the legal employer through a local entity in 100+ countries, withholds and remits local tax, and files the statutory returns. Companies fund payroll in fiat or stablecoins; each worker receives stablecoins or their local currency, and Toku handles the conversion in either direction. The US federal and state compliance guide sets out the wage-law side, which sits separately from the GENIUS Act.

That structure is the reason this regulatory shift is a smaller problem for Toku's customers than for companies sending stablecoins directly to contractors. When the employment layer sits with a provider, the questions above become that provider's questions to answer, with that provider's records behind them.

If you want the specific answers for your team's countries and issuers, book a demo and we will go through them.

Sources

• Chapman and Cutler LLP — GENIUS Act rulemaking and reporting tracker
• Crowdfund Insider, 29 July 2026 — the GENIUS Act deadline passes without final stablecoin rules
• Congress.gov — S.394, GENIUS Act of 2025, full text

Toku provides compliance infrastructure and is not a law firm. This content is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal or tax advice. Consult your legal counsel for jurisdiction-specific guidance.

Regulatory status described on this page is accurate as of 4 August 2026 and is subject to change. Rulemaking is ongoing; verify current status directly with the relevant agency before making decisions.