OUSD, short for Open USD, is a new dollar-pegged stablecoin backed by more than 160 companies — including Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, BlackRock and Coinbase — and it just became the first stablecoin natively supported on Visa’s new stablecoin infrastructure platform. Unlike Tether’s USDT or Circle’s USDC, OUSD is designed to share its reserve income with the businesses that distribute it, rather than let a single issuer keep it.

Key takeaways

  • OUSD launches later in 2026 on Ethereum, built by Open Standard, a consortium founded by Bridge co-founder Zach Abrams and backed by 167-plus companies at time of writing.
  • Visa’s platform picked OUSD first, even though Visa CEO Ryan McInerney has said the company stays “multi-coin, multi-chain” and doesn’t pick winners.
  • Revenue sharing is OUSD’s core weapon: partners mint and redeem at zero cost and split most of the reserve income, instead of an issuer keeping it the way Circle and Tether do.
  • Circle’s stock (CRCL) fell over 17% the day OUSD was announced and another 5% when Visa named it its first supported stablecoin.
  • Tether and Circle still control 83% of the $307 billion stablecoin market, so OUSD’s threat is margin pressure first, market share second.

What is OUSD stablecoin?

OUSD is a dollar-backed stablecoin issued by Open Standard, a consortium of more than 160 companies spanning finance, payments and crypto. Like USDC and USDT, each OUSD token is meant to be redeemable one-to-one for cash and short-term dollar assets held in reserve. What separates it is ownership: OUSD isn’t issued by a single company that captures the profit from those reserves. It’s governed collectively by the businesses backing it, including Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, American Express, Google, Klarna, Shopify, DoorDash, Coinbase, Solana, Ripple, OKX, MetaMask and Trust Wallet.

Open Standard was founded by Zach Abrams, who previously co-founded Bridge, the stablecoin infrastructure company Stripe acquired in 2024 for roughly $1.1 billion. OUSD was first announced on Open Standard’s site on June 30, 2026, with around 149 backers; that list has grown past 160 since. The token is slated to launch first on Solana and Base, with rollouts planned for Polygon, Stellar, Aptos and Tempo, plus integrations with lending protocol Aave and custody network Fireblocks.

Why Visa picked OUSD without picking a winner

Visa’s involvement is the headline because Visa has spent months insisting it stays neutral on stablecoins. That’s technically still true. Visa’s settlement network already supports Circle’s USDC and EURC, PayPal’s PYUSD and Paxos’s USDG, and its stablecoin settlement pilot covers nine blockchains with roughly $7 billion in annualized volume. Visa also runs stablecoin-linked cards, built with Bridge, live in over 100 countries.

What’s new is Visa’s stablecoin infrastructure platform — enterprise tooling that lets banks and fintechs issue, store, transfer and redeem stablecoins, plus wallet infrastructure and treasury tools, without building blockchain systems themselves. OUSD is simply the first asset that platform supports, not the only one it will ever support. Visa gets to profit from the infrastructure layer regardless of which stablecoin ultimately wins, which is consistent with — not contradictory to — staying multi-coin.

The real story: OUSD squeezes margins before it grows market share

The most under-covered part of the OUSD story is that it doesn’t need to out-grow USDC or USDT to hurt Circle and Tether financially — it just needs to exist as a credible alternative that changes the negotiating leverage of every distributor. That’s the framework worth understanding: OUSD is a margin-compression tool first, and a market-share threat second, if ever.

Here’s why. Circle generated $2.75 billion in revenue for full-year 2025, with the bulk coming from interest on the Treasuries backing USDC, and it retains roughly 38% of that reserve income after paying distribution partners. Tether reported more than $10 billion in net profit for 2025, largely from Treasury interest, and now holds more US government debt than Germany or South Korea. Both companies keep the majority of what their reserves earn.

OUSD flips that: Open Standard keeps only a small operational cut and distributes the rest to the consortium. On a hypothetical $1 billion in first-year reserve income split across 167 partners, each firm would earn roughly $6 million — before counting the fees they save on minting and redemption. That gives every backer, from Visa to Stripe to Coinbase, a direct financial incentive to route volume toward OUSD, which is a fundamentally different growth engine than USDC’s or USDT’s marketing budgets.

Circle already feels this pressure. It spent $461 million on distribution and transaction costs in Q4 2025 alone. If large partners start asking for OUSD-style economics to stay loyal, Circle’s options are to pay more, cut fees, or watch volume drift — all of which compress the 38% it currently keeps. Japanese bank Mizuho downgraded Circle’s stock from neutral to underperform and cut its price target from $85 to $50, arguing OUSD could push Circle’s 2027 distribution costs from 64% to 73% of revenue. Tether faces less immediate pressure, since USDT’s strength is emerging-market and offshore dollar access rather than institutional payments, which is OUSD’s actual target.

Not everyone agrees the threat is real yet. Wall Street firm William Blair called OUSD “a solution searching for a problem,” and Bernstein kept an outperform rating on Circle. Paxos’s Global Dollar Network (USDG) uses a similar consortium, revenue-sharing model and remains far smaller than USDC — evidence that an impressive backer list alone doesn’t guarantee adoption.

What OUSD means for stablecoin market dominance

As of this writing, the stablecoin market totals $307 billion. USDT accounts for $183 billion and USDC for $72 billion — together, 83% of the entire market. Both benefit from years of network effects and liquidity that a brand-new token can’t replicate overnight. OUSD’s edge isn’t liquidity; it’s distribution. Its backers already serve hundreds of millions of customers across payments, banking and crypto, giving it a faster path to real-world usage than most of the hundreds of stablecoins that have launched and failed to gain traction.

Whether OUSD ever meaningfully dents that 83% figure is still an open question. But its existence already changes the terms Circle and Tether negotiate with the exchanges, wallets and payment companies that distribute their tokens — and that shift happens whether OUSD succeeds or not.

Frequently asked questions

What is OUSD stablecoin?

OUSD, or Open USD, is a dollar-pegged stablecoin issued by Open Standard, a consortium of 160-plus companies including Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, BlackRock and Coinbase. It’s backed one-to-one by cash and short-term dollar reserves and is set to launch on Ethereum, Solana and Base later in 2026.

Is OUSD backed by Visa?

Visa is one of more than 160 companies in the Open Standard consortium backing OUSD, and OUSD is the first stablecoin supported on Visa’s new enterprise stablecoin infrastructure platform. Visa says it remains “multi-coin, multi-chain” and continues to support USDC, PYUSD and USDG alongside OUSD.

How is OUSD different from USDC and USDT?

OUSD is governed by its backing consortium rather than a single issuer, and it distributes most of its reserve income to partners instead of keeping it. Circle and Tether, by contrast, retain the bulk of the interest earned on the Treasuries backing USDC and USDT.

Will OUSD replace Tether and Circle?

Not necessarily, and not soon. USDT and USDC control roughly 83% of the $307 billion stablecoin market and have years of liquidity and integrations OUSD hasn’t built yet. Analysts are split — Mizuho downgraded Circle’s stock over OUSD’s threat, while William Blair and Bernstein remain skeptical it changes much in the near term.

For more on how stablecoin issuers are wiring into the traditional financial system, see our coverage of Circle’s national trust bank charter and how the GENIUS Act shapes stablecoin reserve rules. For the broader adoption picture, read our analysis of whether stablecoins are replacing banks.

Sources

The original source video, plus the independent sources this article’s key claims were checked against: