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“This is the best product in the history of the world but distribution is broken,” says Ferdinand Dabitz, holding up a $100 bill. Even though U.S. dollars are the world’s favorite currency, says Dabitz, many people seeking to get them must rely on an antiquated system of banks with limited hours staffed by clerks. The 25-year-old Dabitz is the CEO of a new type of bank called Augustus that he says addresses this deficiency thanks to a payments architecture designed around AI and stablecoins, not humans. In a sign that Augustus may be on to something, the bank just received a rare federal banking charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
Founded in 2022, Augustus already holds banking licenses in Europe, which permit it to clear cross-border euro transactions. Its customers include large financial institutions, including the global cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, and Dabitz says the bank is processing billions of euros, while growing 10x year over year. Augustus has raised $40 million from Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures and Creandum, and from the founders of prominent digital finance firms Ramp, Deel, and Circle.
According to Dabitz, Augustus is only the eighth firm to receive a national bank charter from the OCC since 2010. While the agency has handed out other charters to firms like Ripple, these have been in the form of trust charters and similar “skinny” licenses that can come with significant restrictions like a ban on accepting customer deposits or no access to Federal Reserve master accounts.
Augustus has obtained its charter at a time when dollars and euros continue to make up 90% of global trade and, in a statement, the company said its mission is to “secure and advance Western currency dominance by upgrading clearing to the AI era.” It is hoping to do so with the help of a clearing system that is built on code capable of interacting with AI agents rather than on the existing legacy system of correspondent banks.
Under the legacy correspondent system, an overseas bank seeking to process dollar-based transactions will typically have to obtain a series of sign-offs from employees at an intermediary bank that has access to Federal Reserve accounts. This arrangement is slow since it requires banks to carry out the transactions during business hours across different time zones, and is prone to human error.
“We think that’s a broken process, and we think there’s an opportunity to rebuild it around stablecoins and technology, including, of course, AI,” said Dabitz, adding that the foundations of Augustus are built on code rather than legacy paper systems. Augustus currently has staff in New York and Dallas, and plans to ramp up its U.S. presence further now that has its charter from the OCC.
Firms like Ripple have been pushing for years to modernize the correspondent banking system, but Dabitz says that lately there is newfound political momentum in the U.S. to do so, leading agencies like the OCC to grant charters to facilitate the process.
Dabitz is perhaps an unlikely figure to help lead this transformation. At age 25, he bears little resemblance to silver-haired figures like JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, who have long defined the cautious banking industry. Officials at the OCC, however, may have been reassured by Dabitz’s team at Augustus, which includes longtime veterans like Greg Quarles, a former executive at the agency and the former CEO of Green Dot Bank, who is serving as the company’s President. Augustus’s CFO is former JPMorgan executive Joe Schenone, while other members of its C-Suite have done stints at firms like Brex and Revolut.
Dabitz himself is the recipient of a Thiel Fellowship, which is awarded by its billionaire namesake to those who drop out of college in favor of entrepreneurship. He says leading Augustus reflects the culmination of a lifelong dream, following a childhood where his favorite toy was a safe, and where his parents likened him to Scrooge McDuck. Like many other kids he liked Harry Potter, though perhaps unsurprisingly, his favorite scenes included the goblin-run Gringotts Bank.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
