Open USD launches with 140 partners as stablecoin consortium challenges Circle

More than 140 companies including Visa, Stripe, Mastercard, BlackRock and Coinbase on Tuesday unveiled Open USD, a new stablecoin governed by an independent entity that will allow partners to earn a share of reserve income and mint tokens without fees.

"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," Zach Abrams, founding chief executive officer of Open Standard, the independent company set up to run the project, said in a statement.

Open USD will be governed by Open Standard, whose board is drawn from participating partners, preventing any single company from controlling the network. The stablecoin offers fee-free minting and redemption at any scale and distributes reserve earnings to partners after a management fee — a model that targets one of the core economics of today's stablecoin market. Issuers such as Circle earn revenue by investing reserves in short-term U.S. Treasuries and retaining most of the interest; Open USD instead plans to return that yield to participating businesses.

The launch comes as stablecoins move deeper into mainstream finance, with the market already exceeding $300 billion and Citi projecting it could reach $4 trillion by 2030. Open USD is scheduled to go live later this year, and its breadth of backing — spanning payments, banking, crypto and enterprise technology — signals that competition is shifting from issuing tokens to controlling the underlying infrastructure.

The consortium spans global payment networks including Visa, Mastercard and American Express; fintech firms Stripe and Adyen; banks such as BNY, Standard Chartered, DBS and U.S. Bank; crypto companies Coinbase, Bybit, OKX, Ripple and Crypto.com; and enterprise technology providers including Google, IBM and Shopify.

Stripe President of Technology and Business Will Gaybrick said Open USD would become the default stablecoin for businesses running on Stripe. Visa Chief Product and Strategy Officer Jack Forestell said governance, interoperability and trust would be essential as stablecoins become more deeply integrated into the global financial system.

The model resembles the Global Dollar Network (USDG), a stablecoin consortium led by Paxos that shares reserve income with participating firms including Robinhood, Kraken and Galaxy Digital. In Europe, a group of 37 banks and payment providers launched Qivalis in May to develop a euro-denominated stablecoin.

Circle shares fell 13% to $66 on Tuesday, their weakest level since late February, as investors weighed the competitive threat. Circle's USDC has a market capitalization of roughly $73 billion, while market leader Tether's USDT has about $145 billion in circulation, according to DefiLlama data.

Circle Chief Executive Officer Jeremy Allaire downplayed the threat. "Stablecoins represent one of the largest market opportunities in the world as the internet transforms the infrastructure for storing and moving money," he said in a post on X. "We welcome continued innovation and competition in the space."

The Open USD launch shows how the stablecoin market is evolving from a two-player race between Tether and Circle into a multi-network ecosystem where banks, payment companies and fintechs can participate in the economics of digital dollar issuance. With more than 140 partners already committed at launch, the consortium's scale may accelerate adoption among businesses that have been reluctant to rely on a single issuer's product roadmap.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.