Bipartisan PACE Act Would Give Crypto Firms Direct Access to Federal Reserve Payment Rails

California Representatives Sam Liccardo and Young Kim introduced the PACE Act on April 21, 2026, a bipartisan bill that would grant certain nonbank payment providers, including regulated crypto firms like Ripple and Circle, direct access to the Federal Reserve's payment infrastructure. If passed, the legislation would mark the first time crypto companies could tap into Fed rails without routing transactions through traditional bank intermediaries.

The bill's stated objective is straightforward: make everyday payments faster and cheaper for American consumers and businesses. Currently, nonbank payment providers must rely on correspondent banking relationships, a layered system that adds cost, friction, and settlement delays to transactions. Direct Fed access would let qualifying firms settle payments in real time through systems like FedNow and Fedwire, bypassing the intermediary layer entirely.

For Ripple and Circle, the implications are substantial. Circle's USDC stablecoin processed over $20 trillion in on-chain transfer volume in 2024, yet the company still depends on banking partners to move dollars in and out of the traditional financial system. Ripple, whose cross-border payment network competes directly with SWIFT and correspondent banking, has spent years arguing that legacy infrastructure inflates transaction costs. Direct Fed access would remove one of the most significant structural bottlenecks both companies currently face. Current pricing for XRP and USDC is available on CoinGecko; neither the bill's introduction nor its prospects have been reflected in public statements from either firm.

The bipartisan framing matters. Liccardo is a Democrat and former mayor of San Jose; Kim is a Republican representing Orange County. Their joint sponsorship signals that payment modernization is becoming a rare area of cross-party agreement in an otherwise fractured Congress. The crypto industry has broadly backed the bill, though the path to passage runs through committees where the traditional banking lobby carries considerable weight. Banks have long benefited from exclusive access to Fed payment infrastructure, and any legislation that erodes that advantage will face organized opposition. Groups like the American Bankers Association have historically pushed back hard against proposals that allow nonbanks to access settlement infrastructure without equivalent capital and regulatory requirements.

The Federal Reserve itself represents another potential obstacle. The Fed has historically been cautious about extending master account access to nonbank entities, a position reinforced by its 2022 guidelines that made it harder for crypto-focused banks like Custodia to obtain Fed accounts. Granting full payment rail access to nonbank crypto firms raises legitimate questions about systemic risk, capital adequacy, and what happens when a firm using Fed infrastructure faces a liquidity crisis. The PACE Act will need to address those concerns explicitly, or it risks stalling in the same regulatory resistance that has blocked similar proposals.

The broader context is a Washington increasingly willing to legislate crypto into the mainstream financial system rather than litigate it out. The GENIUS Act, advancing through the Senate, would establish a federal framework for stablecoin issuers. The FIT21 market structure bill passed the House in 2024. The PACE Act fits that pattern: a legislative effort to define the terms on which crypto firms operate alongside, rather than outside, traditional finance. Whether this bill survives committee, reconciles Fed concerns, and avoids being gutted by banking industry amendments is far from certain. Its introduction alone confirms that the question is no longer whether regulated crypto firms belong in the U.S. payment system. The debate has shifted to how.