Open USD, the stablecoin backed by five of the biggest names in payments, went live this week on four blockchains with more than $1 billion in liquidity commitments from its founding partners.The backers are Coinbase, Mastercard, Shopify, Stripe and Visa. Each holds an equal initial equity stake in the issuer, a San Francisco company called Open Standard, and each has pledged part of the combined sum to support trading and conversion of the new token, OUSD. The companies will contribute in different ways depending on their business: some may hold OUSD on their balance sheets, others will keep tokens on blockchains or support market-making.The token launched on Ethereum, Solana, Base and Tempo. Those four networks cover a large share of dollar-stablecoin activity, and Base is operated by Coinbase while Stripe backs Tempo. Open Standard did not disclose a circulating supply figure on launch day, but Tempo said OUSD trading liquidity had already passed $400 million in the token’s first 24 hours.
Different economics from the incumbents
Open USD enters a stablecoin market worth more than $300 billion, dominated by two issuers. Tether’s USDT circulates at roughly $143 billion and Circle’s USDC near $74 billion. Both keep nearly all of the interest earned on their reserves, which in Circle’s case accounts for the bulk of its revenue.Open Standard is attempting a different split. It charges no minting or redemption fees, and it ties partner rewards and ownership to how much supply a partner helps create and use. Chief executive Zach Abrams, who co-founded stablecoin infrastructure firm Bridge before Stripe acquired it for $1.1 billion in 2024, summarized the pitch in an interview: “Every other stablecoin is building a fund. We’re building money.”Bridge becomes the OUSD issuer and will publish monthly reports on the reserves, which BlackRock, BNY Mellon and Lead Bank manage. A portfolio of that size earning roughly 4 percent generates near $40 million a year, income that flows partly to the partners under the new arrangement rather than to a single issuer’s shareholders.
The threat to Circle is already priced in
The model hits Circle’s economics directly, and analysts have acted on it. In July, Mizuho cut its price target on the company from $85 to $50 and downgraded the stock from Neutral to Underperform, citing competition from Open USD. The bank raised its projected 2027 distribution and transaction expense ratio for Circle from 64 percent to 73 percent and cut its adjusted earnings estimate from $1.09 billion to $699 million.Crypto traders have pulled more than $2.39 billion into digital asset funds this week even as bitcoin retreated, pointing to continued appetite for the asset class despite the yield challenge from tokenized cash products.
The ownership structure
The five founding partners receive equal initial equity stakes, with future ownership tied to contributions, an unusual construction for a stablecoin issuer. The size of each company’s individual investment was not disclosed. Abrams told CoinDesk the founding partners would help establish liquidity over the coming months, and Open Standard reports its partner network has grown past 200 companies, up from 140 in June.Dan Romero, chief business officer at Tempo, predicted roughly $1 billion of OUSD on his chain within months, growth past $10 billion sometime in 2027, and possibly more than $100 billion over the following several years. Tempo is positioned to become Open USD’s deepest liquidity pool even as the token runs on several blockchains at once.Those projections remain unproven. Large payment firms have launched or backed stablecoins before without displacing USDT, which still holds most everyday crypto trading volume. What separates OUSD is the ownership: Visa, Mastercard and Shopify now hold equity in the issuer, giving each a direct financial reason to route payment flows, settlement balances and merchant payouts through the token.
A crowded field
The launch lands as dollar stablecoins attract competition on several fronts. HSBC is preparing a year-end launch of its own RedCoin token in Hong Kong. Rain, a payments firm, has applied for a national trust bank charter from the OCC that would let it issue dollar-backed tokens. Banks and card networks that once treated stablecoins as a niche crypto product now build them directly.For merchants, the near-term difference is fees. Open Standard’s elimination of minting and redemption charges matters most to companies moving large volumes in and out of stablecoins, where conversion costs that run from tens of basis points add up quickly.Whether OUSD reaches meaningful circulation depends on adoption by payment apps and merchants rather than on the opening pledge. The $1 billion commitment guarantees liquidity for early users, but the token becomes significant when balances sit on partner balance sheets for weeks, not hours. That test will play out over the rest of the quarter.Stablecoin regulation is also settling into place. The OCC has opened its doors to payments firms seeking trust charters, and HSBC operates in Hong Kong under HKMA license FRS02 for its RedCoin plans. In the United Kingdom, the FCA’s crypto authorization window opened this week with a February deadline, a signal that established financial centres want the sector inside the perimeter rather than outside it.The timing also matters for crypto trading floors. Bitcoin has slipped under $84,000 on Middle East shipping risk, and weekly digital asset inflows hit $2.39 billion in the same stretch, showing that money keeps arriving even when prices fall. Tokens pegged to the dollar, which pay no yield to holders in the way of OUSD’s partners through rewards, sit outside that volatility but still ride on the same settlement rails.The open question is distribution. Visa and Mastercard reach billions of cards, Coinbase owns a retail exchange, and Shopify runs a major checkout network, so the plumbing exists. Convincing a merchant in São Paulo or Manila to hold balances in OUSD instead of USDC will come down to fees, incentives and integrations that most have yet to turn on.