Issuer explainer

What Is Open USD (OUSD)?

Open USD is a consortium stablecoin from Open Standard, backed by 140+ payment networks, banks, and tech firms including Visa, Stripe, and Mastercard. Here is how it works and what makes it different.

Open USD (ticker OUSD) is a U.S. dollar stablecoin announced in 2026 by Open Standard, a new independent company. It is designed as shared infrastructure for global money movement rather than the product of a single issuer.

What sets it apart is its backing coalition: more than 140 of the world's largest payment networks, banks, and technology companies, including Visa, Stripe, Mastercard, BlackRock, BNY, and Coinbase, have signed up to use it. Open USD is not yet live and is expected to launch later in 2026.

How Open USD is backed

Open USD is designed to be backed 1:1 by short-dated U.S. Treasury bills and cash equivalents, the same high-quality liquid reserves used by leading regulated stablecoins.

Its arrival is tied to regulatory clarity in the United States. A clear federal framework for payment stablecoins is what gives large institutions the confidence to build on it, so reserve rules and attestations are expected to follow that standard.

What makes Open USD different

Open USD is built around three principles that target the pain points businesses hit with existing stablecoins:

  • Build for scale: businesses can mint and redeem Open USD at no cost, with no artificial volume caps
  • Earn by default: partners receive the earnings from Open USD's reserves, less a small management fee, rather than the issuer keeping the yield
  • Govern collaboratively: it is operated by Open Standard, whose board is made up of its partners

Who is behind it

Open Standard is led by founding CEO Zach Abrams, who also runs Bridge, the stablecoin infrastructure company acquired by Stripe. The coalition spans payment networks (Visa, Mastercard, American Express), processors (Stripe, Adyen, Fiserv), banks (BlackRock, BNY, Standard Chartered, U.S. Bank, BBVA), technology firms (Google, Shopify, DoorDash), and crypto infrastructure (Coinbase, Ripple, Solana, Fireblocks).

Stripe has said Open USD will become the default stablecoin for businesses using stablecoins on its platform, giving it distribution from day one.

What Open USD is used for

  • Low-cost, high-throughput B2B settlement and money movement
  • Cross-border payouts and payments at industrial scale
  • A shared, partner-governed alternative to single-issuer stablecoins
  • Reserve income for the businesses that drive its adoption

Editorial details per issuer announcements. Live market data will be added once the coin launches. Not investment advice.

FAQ

OUSD, answered

What is Open USD?

Open USD (ticker OUSD) is a U.S. dollar stablecoin announced in 2026 by Open Standard, an independent company. It is designed as shared, low-cost infrastructure for global money movement, backed by more than 140 payment networks, banks, and technology companies including Visa, Stripe, and Mastercard.

Is Open USD live yet?

No. Open USD was announced in 2026 and Open Standard says it will go live later that year. Details such as final reserve composition, regulatory treatment, and governance are still being finalized.

How is Open USD different from USDC or USDT?

Unlike single-issuer stablecoins where the issuer keeps most of the reserve yield, Open USD returns reserve earnings to its partners and lets businesses mint and redeem at no cost with no volume caps. It is governed collaboratively by Open Standard's partner board rather than one company.

Who is behind Open USD?

It is operated by Open Standard, led by founding CEO Zach Abrams, who also runs Stripe's Bridge. Backers include Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, BlackRock, BNY, Coinbase, Google, Shopify, and more than 140 companies in total.