Visa, Stripe and 140 Partners Back Open USD, a Stablecoin Built to Share Reserve Income
The stablecoin market has largely been a two-company story. On Tuesday, a coalition of more than 140 businesses, including Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, BlackRock and Coinbase, set out to change that. A new company called Open Standard announced Open USD (OUSD), a dollar stablecoin it plans to launch later this year with a model that hands most of the interest earned on its reserves back to the businesses that use it.
The news drew an immediate reaction from investors in Circle, the issuer of USDC, whose shares fell sharply after the announcement.
What Open Standard announced
According to Open Standard’s launch announcement, dated June 30, OUSD will be operated by Open Standard, which describes itself as an independent company with a board made up of OUSD’s partners. The aim is for decisions to serve the group as a whole rather than a single issuer.
The economic model is the main selling point. Businesses will be able to mint and redeem OUSD at no cost and without artificial volume limits. Partners will receive the earnings from the reserves backing the token, minus a small management fee that covers operating costs. In most existing stablecoins, the issuer keeps that interest income, which has made stablecoin issuance one of the most profitable businesses in crypto.
“It’s a stablecoin built for the internet economy, designed by the businesses growing it,” said Zach Abrams, Open Standard’s founding chief executive, in the announcement. Abrams co-founded Bridge, the stablecoin infrastructure company Stripe acquired for $1.1 billion.
A long list of partners
The partner list is unusually broad. On the payments side it includes Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover, Adyen, Fiserv, Klarna, Affirm and Western Union. Banks and asset managers include BlackRock, BNY, Standard Chartered, DBS, BBVA, U.S. Bank, Mizuho and SMFG. Technology and commerce names include Google, Samsung Electronics, IBM, Shopify, DoorDash and Mercado Libre. Crypto firms include Coinbase, Ripple, OKX, Crypto.com, Gemini, MetaMask, Aave, Fireblocks and Galaxy, alongside networks such as Solana, Base, Sui, Polygon and Stellar.
Some partners have already described concrete roles. Stripe’s Will Gaybrick said in the announcement that “Open USD will be the default stablecoin for businesses running on Stripe.” Coinbase confirmed that OUSD is coming to its Base network and other chains later this year, according to Bankless via Yahoo Finance. Open Standard itself did not say which blockchain the token will launch on, though Tempo, the Stripe-aligned payments chain, said OUSD will be issued natively on its network from day one, as reported by SiliconANGLE.
Two names are notably absent: Tether and Circle.
Pressure on the incumbents
Tether’s USDT held about 62% of the stablecoin market in April and Circle’s USDC about 25%, according to CoinGecko figures cited by Fortune. Circle’s stock fell 13% after the announcement and was trading around $66 per share, Fortune reported.
Both companies responded publicly. “We welcome continued innovation and competition in the space,” Circle chief executive Jeremy Allaire wrote on X. Tether chief executive Paolo Ardoino wrote: “Welcome OUSD. Player 2 has entered the game.”
The challenge OUSD poses is less about technology than about distribution and incentives. Payment networks, merchants and fintech apps currently have little financial reason to favor one dollar stablecoin over another, while issuers keep the yield. By promising to share that income with partners, Open Standard is giving the companies that control consumer and merchant relationships a direct stake in pushing its token.
Why it matters for crypto readers
Stablecoins are the most widely used product in crypto, serving as the main trading pair on exchanges, the base asset of most DeFi markets and a growing tool for cross-border payments. A token backed by the largest card networks, a major payments processor and the world’s biggest asset manager could reach businesses and users that have never touched a crypto exchange.
The launch also reflects how the market has changed since the GENIUS Act, the U.S. stablecoin law signed by President Donald Trump in July 2025, gave issuers a federal framework. Large companies are now competing to shape the market rather than watching from the sidelines. Klarna launched KlarnaUSD last November, Paxos’s USDG is backed by a network that includes Mastercard and Robinhood, and earlier this month a group of major U.S. banks unveiled a shared on-chain deposit initiative, according to Fortune. Amazon and Walmart have also signaled interest in issuing their own tokens.
For DeFi users, partners such as Aave, Morpho and MetaMask suggest OUSD is meant to work in on-chain markets, not just corporate payment flows. How quickly it gains liquidity there will help decide whether it becomes a real alternative to USDT and USDC.
What is still unknown
Open Standard has not given a launch date beyond “later this year,” named a primary blockchain, or detailed the size of the management fee and how reserve income will be split among partners. It also has not said how reserves will be held or which regulated entity will issue the token. Those details will determine whether a large partner list turns into actual usage once OUSD goes live.