Open USD: 140+ Companies Back a Shared Stablecoin for Global Money Movement

A coalition of more than 140 of the world’s largest payment networks, banks, and technology companies has thrown its weight behind a single new stablecoin. Open Standard, a newly formed independent company, has announced Open USD (ticker OUSD), a dollar-pegged stablecoin backed by short-dated U.S. Treasury bills and cash equivalents, designed as shared infrastructure for global money movement rather than the product of any one issuer. It is led by founding CEO Zach Abrams, who also runs Bridge, the stablecoin infrastructure company Stripe acquired.

The pitch is aimed squarely at businesses that have found existing stablecoins useful but hard to operate at scale. Stablecoin transaction volume is now approaching that of the ACH network, yet companies still hit three recurring walls: mint and redeem fees that become prohibitive at high volume, reserve income they cannot capture, and dependence on a third-party issuer’s roadmap.

Three design principles

• Build for scale. Businesses can mint and redeem Open USD at no cost, with no artificial caps on volume.
• Earn by default. Partners receive all of the earnings from Open USD’s reserves, less a small management fee that covers Open Standard’s operating costs.
• Govern collaboratively. Open USD is operated by Open Standard, an independent company whose board is made up of its partners, so decisions are meant to serve the collective rather than a single entity.

“Existing stablecoins have great strengths, but to use them at scale, businesses need something that’s open, low-cost, high-throughput, broadly accessible, and aligned to their interests,” said Abrams. He framed Open USD as “a stablecoin built for the internet economy, designed by the businesses growing it.”

The consortium structure is the crux of the difference. With single-issuer coins like USDC or USDT, most of the yield on reserves flows to the issuer. Open USD instead returns reserve income to its partners, giving the businesses that drive adoption a direct economic incentive to route volume through it.

An unusually broad coalition

What makes this launch stand out is less the technology and more the roster. The list of businesses signed up to use Open USD spans the entire money-movement stack:

• Payment networks and processors: Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover, Stripe, Adyen, Fiserv, Checkout.com, Nuvei, Marqeta, Worldline, Galileo, and Klarna, among others.
• Banks and financial institutions: BlackRock, BNY, Standard Chartered, U.S. Bank, BBVA, DBS, Mizuho, Itaú, ANZ, UOB, Emirates NBD, SoFi, Chime, and dozens more across every major region.
• Technology and commerce: Google, Samsung Electronics, IBM, Shopify, DoorDash, Mercado Libre, Grab, Rakuten, and Infosys.
• Crypto and digital-asset infrastructure: Coinbase, Ripple, Solana, OKX, Crypto.com, Fireblocks, Gemini, MetaMask, Aave, Anchorage Digital, Bridge, Stellar, Polygon, and Aptos Labs.
• Remittance and cross-border: Western Union, MoneyGram, Remitly, Ria, Nium, Taptap Send, and Félix.

What the partners are saying

The supporting quotes point to a common theme: stablecoins as neutral, shared plumbing rather than a competitive product.

• Visa framed its role as building the “trust layer.” Chief Product and Strategy Officer Jack Forestell said the network is bringing “the same discipline, risk standards, and operational rigor we apply to our global network to Open USD.”
• Stripe went furthest on commitment: President of Technology and Business Will Gaybrick said Open USD “will be the default stablecoin for businesses running on Stripe,” designed for “the 2040 economy.”
• Mastercard likened the effort to the internet and mobile networks, which “succeeded because they became shared infrastructure that anyone could build on,” per Chief Product Officer Jorn Lambert.
• BlackRock called it “a constructive step toward giving businesses more choice in how they access tokenized value,” said Global Head of Market Development Samara Cohen.
• BNY put a number on the opportunity: Chief Product and Innovation Officer Carolyn Weinberg said stablecoins “may grow to $1.5 trillion by 2030.”
• DoorDash co-founder Andy Fang stressed the governance model: “no single company controls it, and the partners building on it have a seat at the table.”

The analyst view: distribution and rails

Early commentary has focused less on the coin itself and more on what the coalition unlocks. Farcaster co-founder Dan Romero argued the 140-plus initial partners represent an enormous pool of distribution outside crypto, potentially thousands of B2B payment flows that could settle in stablecoins.

His second point is about on and off ramps. By combining the largest payment companies with tier-one crypto exchanges, Open USD would have some of the best global ramps in the market on day one. That matters because ramp support is what turns a stablecoin from a token into a usable payment rail. Shared reserve economics then give traditional companies a far stronger reason to modernize their payment infrastructure toward stablecoins in the first place.

Romero also tied the launch back to regulation: none of this would be feasible without a clear federal framework. Regulatory clarity, he argued, is what gives large institutions the confidence to make long-term infrastructure bets. See our explainer on the GENIUS Act for the rules that made this kind of coalition possible.

What it means for finance teams

For CFOs and treasury leaders, Open USD is worth watching for reasons that go beyond the headline names:

• Cost structure. Fee-free minting and redemption at scale directly changes the unit economics of using stablecoins for payouts, settlement, and cross-border flows.
• Reserve economics. Passing reserve yield back to partners, rather than the issuer keeping it, reframes stablecoins from a cost center toward a potential source of income.
• Governance risk. A partner-governed, independent operator is designed to reduce single-issuer dependency, one of the concerns that has kept some finance teams cautious.
• Interoperability. Broad network support suggests Open USD could become widely accepted across payment rails and platforms, which matters for any business weighing which stablecoin to standardize on.

The usual caveats apply. Open USD is not yet live; Open Standard says it will launch later this year. Reserve composition, regulatory treatment across jurisdictions, and the details of the governance board will determine whether the “open” framing holds up in practice. As always, the specifics of attestations, custody, and redemption rights are what a treasury team should diligence before committing.

Still, the sheer breadth of the coalition marks a shift. Rather than another issuer competing for share, this is a large slice of the global payments industry attempting to consolidate around common stablecoin infrastructure.

For a deeper breakdown, read our full explainer on what Open USD is. To put it in context, start with stablecoins 101, see how stablecoin payments work, compare the list of stablecoins by market cap, or review the market data behind adoption.

Source: https://x.com/openstandard/status/2071952870396580314