Visa and Mastercard join forces with 140 giants to launch a new stablecoin, but the impact on the market landscape may still be limited

Author: Gu Yu, ChainCatcher

On the first day of the second half of 2026, the stablecoin market welcomed a rare variable: the stablecoin company Open Standard announced the launch of Open USD (OUSD), which has received support from over 140 companies, including traditional financial, payment, technology, and crypto giants such as Visa, Stripe, Mastercard, BlackRock, Standard Chartered, Google, and Coinbase.

In the past decade, countless stablecoins have challenged USDT and USDC, but most have faltered in the face of two realities: USDT's monopoly on exchanges and offshore liquidity, and USDC's dominance in the U.S. compliance and institutional entry. Whether it’s GUSD, FDUSD, TUSD, or various algorithmic stablecoins and regional stablecoins, it has been difficult to shake the core network effects of USDT and USDC.

What sets OUSD apart is that it is not driven by a single exchange, a single payment company, or a single issuer, but is backed by a group of fiercely competitive traditional giants. The signal it sends is clear: as stablecoin penetration increases, the traditional financial system is unwilling to be constrained by the crypto-native stablecoin system.

As a significant milestone in the stablecoin landscape, OUSD is likely to change the existing stablecoin dynamics and significantly enhance the adoption of stablecoins in the global financial system.

1. How is OUSD different from other stablecoins?

The biggest feature of OUSD is its alliance nature.

According to the design of Open Standard, it adopts collaborative management, with an independent management team and governance mechanism responsible for overseeing the design and operation of Open USD. Unlike stablecoins issued by a single company, Open Standard attempts to enable participants to make decisions based on common interests rather than the interests of a single entity.

This makes it look more like a "industry standards organization" for stablecoins.

The revenue model of traditional stablecoins is primarily based on the issuer earning returns from reserve assets, while both minting and redemption incur fees. The business models of Tether and Circle heavily rely on interest income generated from reserves. Especially during high-interest periods, stablecoin issuers can achieve considerable profits simply by expanding circulation.

OUSD aims to change this distribution mechanism. Open Standard states that OUSD will return most of the income generated from reserves to participants who adopt and distribute the currency, after deducting a small management fee, and there will be no fees for minting and redemption.

This is the key difference of OUSD: it does not merely challenge USDC with "more compliance" or "more transparency," but challenges the existing stablecoin business model with revenue distribution.

For Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, Coinbase, exchanges, and payment companies, the hardest part about stablecoins is not understanding the technology, but why they should distribute currency for others while giving up reserve income to the issuer. The design of OUSD essentially redistributes stablecoin revenue from the issuer back to the channel providers.

If USDC is the stablecoin promoted by the early collaboration between Circle and Coinbase, then OUSD attempts to expand this channel-sharing mechanism to the entire payment and financial industry.

2. The implications behind the team and partner list

According to data from the Open Standard website and LinkedIn, the two members currently disclosed by the company both come from the stablecoin payment platform Bridge, which was acquired by Stripe for $1.1 billion. The CEO is Zach Abrams, co-founder and CEO of Bridge, while the other founding member, Ben O'Neill, who does not have a specific title listed, is the head of liquidity at Bridge.

At the same time, both of their LinkedIn profiles show that their work at Bridge is still active, indicating that they are employed at Open Standard under the arrangement of their parent company, Stripe, reflecting Stripe's particularly prominent influence within Open Standard.

In fact, Stripe is also one of the most vocal among the 140+ companies, having posted on X announcing that it is making Open USD the default option for businesses using stablecoins on Stripe.

This is not surprising. Stripe has been one of the most aggressive traditional payment companies in the stablecoin space over the past two years, from acquiring Bridge to acquiring wallet infrastructure provider Privy, and now participating in OUSD, Stripe's path is becoming increasingly clear: it is not satisfied with merely being an integrator of stablecoin payments but aims to master the key nodes of stablecoin issuance, wallets, compliance, and distribution.

It is worth mentioning that companies like MoneyGram and Western Union have previously announced their own stablecoin plans but still appear in the OUSD-related partnership landscape; meanwhile, PayPal, which has issued PYUSD, is not on the list. This indicates that traditional payment giants' attitudes toward stablecoins are diverging: some choose to build their own, some choose alliances, and some may be forced to reassess their silo strategies.

The list of exchanges is even more noteworthy.

OUSD's crypto partners include Coinbase, Bybit, OKX, Crypto.com, Gemini, Bitso, and Upbit's parent company Dunamu, but the only major exchange absent is Binance.

This absence is not coincidental. Binance has previously promoted its own ecosystem-dominated stablecoins like BUSD, FDUSD, and TUSD, but ultimately their adoption rates have been unsatisfactory. For Binance, a new stablecoin driven by forces like Coinbase, Stripe, and Visa may not align with its strategic interests.

Coinbase's involvement is more subtle. As a core partner in the issuance of USDC by Circle, Coinbase has been the most important promoter in the development process of USDC, with both equity investment relationships and revenue-sharing agreements binding their interests deeply. Its participation in the OUSD ecosystem reflects Coinbase's current inclination to diversify its bets.

As USDC's advantages in compliance and channel distribution are weakened, Circle's negative impact is immediately reflected in the capital market, with its stock price dropping over 17% to $62 that evening, approaching its IPO issue price, and down over 55% from its previous peak of $140.

3. Crypto industry insiders generally believe the impact is limited

Despite the large lineup of OUSD partners and the significant impact on Circle's stock price, many crypto industry opinion leaders on X generally believe that while OUSD has clear application scenarios, it is unlikely to bring substantial impact to USDT and USDC due to issues like liquidity and execution, and may even be beneficial to both.

Lorenzo Valente, Director of Digital Asset Research at ARK Invest, raised questions about the organizational structure. In his view, "everyone owning" almost always means no one is responsible.

"I don't believe an organization that looks like a DAO of 500 companies can act quickly enough to make a long-term impact. Who decides the listing strategy? Capital allocation? Or anything else?" Lorenzo Valente posted, "Open Standard is a competing DAO that has no real commitment to anything; I would bet on those two operators that can deliver products unilaterally rather than a committee that needs to consult 500 competitors."

ARK Invest's attitude is also reflected in specific actions. Public data shows that Ark Invest bought 52,455 shares of Circle (worth $3.28 million) again last night. According to incomplete statistics, Ark Invest has cumulatively purchased over 4.5 million shares of Circle in the past six months, currently valued at over $250 million.

Crypto KOL lufei shares a similar view. The competition among stablecoins is not about whose shareholder list is more glamorous, but about who has liquidity, network effects, compliance capabilities, BD execution power, and capital allocation ability. The biggest problem with OpenUSD is that there are too many large institutions, interests are too dispersed, governance is too slow, and economic incentives are too thin, making it difficult for it to execute quickly, take risks, and build a truly stablecoin network like Circle or Tether.

Imran Khan, co-founder of Alliance, also stated that alliance stablecoins will win in corporate fund management, inter-company settlements, and behind-the-scenes payment tracks, where end users may not even know which stablecoin they are using. However, OUSD will not automatically take market share from USDT or USDC. The biggest moat for Circle/Tether is not technology, but liquidity, integration, and global distribution.

Blue Fox believes that OUSD may capture a significant share in corporate payments/remittances/merchant/RWA areas, driving overall growth in stablecoin share, but this does not mean the end for USDC/USDT; each will ultimately have its own use cases.

For example, USDT still has opportunities in crypto trading/speculation/DeFi/emerging markets, USDC has opportunities in institutional/compliance/DeFi areas, while OUSD has greater development opportunities in corporate scenarios (such as large-scale payments, merchant settlements, cross-border transfers using stablecoins).

Honest Mr. Mai stated that as long as traditional financial institutions open up crypto payment channels, there will ultimately be multiple stablecoins for users to choose from, whether to use USDT, USDC, or OUSD will be up to the users, just like Stripe currently supports multiple payment methods, or like Binance promoting its own BUSD, USDT, USDC, and Hyperliquid promoting its own USDH, USDC. If these 3 billion users can come in, it could easily cut off 80% of USDC and USDT.

Colin Wu, founder of Wu Blockchain, believes that being overly compliant is a disadvantage for OUSD. In his view, stablecoins, like other products in the crypto space, meet the demand for "regulatory evasion." As scale expands, compliance is inevitable, making it impossible to evade regulation, which reduces demand, and the difference between stablecoins and traditional digital dollars becomes minimal. Therefore, stablecoins still rely on crypto applications.

Considering these viewpoints, OUSD is unlikely to immediately shake the market shares of USDT and USDC. The true moat of stablecoins has never been technology and compliance, but liquidity, trading pairs, payment networks, and user habits, all of which require years or even longer to accumulate.

At the same time, OUSD will significantly enhance the adoption rate of stablecoins in the traditional financial system, and USDC and USDC will also benefit in this process.

However, compared to challenging USDT and USDC in the short term, the greater significance of OUSD lies in sending a signal to the market: traditional finance is no longer satisfied with merely "using stablecoins," but is beginning to actively participate in the construction of stablecoin infrastructure. When banks, payment institutions, internet platforms, and crypto companies jointly promote the popularization of stablecoins, the entire market's ceiling will also rise accordingly.