Wells Fargo Applies for WFUSD Trademark, Signaling Use in Crypto and Stablecoins

In brief

• Global banking firm Wells Fargo applied for a trademark for the wordmark “WFUSD.”
• The goods and service categories for use mention cryptocurrency, stablecoins, and digital assets.
• Other banks, like JPMorgan and Western Union have also applied for trademarks around the time of their respective digital token launches.

Global banking firm Wells Fargo applied for a trademark for “WFUSD” for potential use in service categories that mention cryptocurrency and stablecoins, a new filing with the U.S. Patent and Trademark office shows.  The firm’s filing, dated March 10, has been accepted by the USPTO but awaits assignment to an examining attorney, and enters a trademark queue that extends to more than 10 months according to average processing times. The San Francisco-based company intends to utilize the WFUSD wordmark across multiple service categories, the filing shows, indicated as classes IC 009, IC 036, and IC042. That trio extends to goods and services including software facilitating financial transactions, cryptocurrency trading, exchange, and payment services, as well software for processing “cryptocurrency, stablecoin, digital and blockchain assets.”

Two of those classes, IC 009 and IC 036, were included in a similar filing by another publicly traded banking firm, Western Union, when it filed for a “WUUSD” trademark in October.  That filing followed Western Union’s announced intentions to launch a dollar-backed stablecoin—albeit using a different ticker, USDPT—on the Solana blockchain in 2026. Typically, crypto tokens with tickers ending or including “USD” denote a dollar-pegged stablecoin.  But tickers are sometimes deceiving.

Crypto users speculated that JPMorgan may be launching a stablecoin after it filed for a trademark for “JPMD” last June. But the firm soon after revealed a tokenized deposit token using the JPMD ticker—not a dollar-backed stablecoin. That filing, which also included class IC 036, is still pending.  Details about what Western Union aims to do with the trademark remain outstanding. A representative for the firm did not immediately respond to _Decrypt’s _request for comment.  The publicly traded firm has been connected to crypto for years, dismissing claims that the asset class was a “fad” as early as 2020. The firm provided its members with access to Bitcoin ETFs in early 2024, and last year it was included in a group of banks discussing a potential joint stablecoin venture.  Shares in Wells Fargo & Company (WFC) have dipped 1.8% on the day, recently changing hands around $77.60. Shares are down around 17.5% year-to-date, but have gained more than 14% in the last full year of trading.