More than 140 companies back new Open USD stablecoin
More than 140 companies, among them Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Stripe, BlackRock and Coinbase, have thrown their weight behind a new dollar-backed stablecoin called Open USD, according to a launch announcement on June 30 reported by Payments Dive and Fortune. The token will be operated by a company called Open Standard and is expected to go live later in 2026.
Open Standard will be led on an interim basis by Zach Abrams, chief executive of the Stripe subsidiary Bridge, according to the launch statement. Its board is to be composed of partner institutions rather than a single controlling company.
The consortium set out three design principles. Businesses will be able to mint and redeem the token at no cost and without volume limits. Earnings from the stablecoin’s reserves will be shared among partners, minus a management fee for operating costs. Governance will sit with the partner board, which the group said is intended to keep decisions aligned with collective rather than single-company interests.
The backer list spans card networks, banks, fintechs and crypto firms. Adyen, Klarna and Affirm are taking part, as are the money transfer companies Western Union and MoneyGram and banks including U.S. Bank, Citizens and BNY. The inclusion of Coinbase is notable, as the exchange has long supported Circle’s USDC, which Open USD would compete against.
“In payments, scale only comes with trust,” Jack Forestell, Visa’s chief product and strategy officer, said in a statement quoted by Payments Dive. “As stablecoins evolve, the focus must shift from speed to reliability, governance and interoperability.”
Jorn Lambert, Mastercard’s chief product officer, said in the same announcement that payment infrastructure behind stablecoins should be open and interoperable, comparing the approach to how the internet and mobile networks became shared infrastructure.
Carolyn Weinberg, BNY’s chief product and innovation officer, said the bank expects stablecoins to account for 1.5 trillion dollars in value by 2030, according to the launch release.
Neither Tether nor Circle, the two largest stablecoin issuers, is part of the consortium. Circle’s share price fell following the announcement, according to reporting by PaySpace Magazine.