Open USD
Overview
Open USD (OUSD) is the stablecoin of Open Standard, an independent company announced on 30 June 2026 and backed by a consortium of 140+ businesses: card networks (Visa, Mastercard, American Express), payments and crypto firms (Stripe, Coinbase, Ripple, MetaMask, Aave, Morpho), tech platforms (Google/Alphabet, Shopify, DoorDash), asset managers (BlackRock), and banks (BNY, BBVA, DBS, OCBC, Standard Chartered). Founding CEO is Zach Abrams, co-founder of Bridge — the stablecoin-infrastructure company Stripe acquired.
Three design choices set it apart. Governance: no single issuer controls it — Open Standard’s board is composed of the partners, a structure closer to a card network than to a crypto issuer. Economics: partners mint and redeem with zero fees and no volume limits, and nearly all reserve yield flows back to the businesses that distribute the coin, after a small management fee. Compliance: the GENIUS Act bars paying yield to coin holders, but not to partner businesses — that is precisely the lane OUSD’s revenue-sharing uses.
The strategic read: distribution partners have a direct financial incentive to grow OUSD supply, which is why the announcement was widely seen as a structural attack on Circle’s and Tether’s float economics (Circle’s stock dropped sharply on the news). USDG proved the yield-sharing consortium model at small scale; OUSD scales it to the biggest names in payments.
For payment processors the takeaway is timing: OUSD is announced, not live — planned launch chains are Solana (native from day one), Polygon, Stellar, and Aptos. Track it, but build against the coins already in Visa/Mastercard settlement programs (USDC, PYUSD, USDG).
Card-network settlement support
Not yet live, so not yet in either network’s settlement set — but Visa, Mastercard, and Amex are consortium members, so settlement support after launch is widely expected.
Regulation & reserves
Fully reserved USD held at major financial institutions (BlackRock and BNY named among reserve partners); nearly all reserve income is distributed to partner businesses after a small operational fee — an inversion of the issuer-keeps-the-float model used by Tether and Circle.
Chain deployments
| Chain | Standard | Contract / asset identifier |
|---|---|---|
| Solana | SPL (planned) | Native issuance from day one, per Open Standard. No contracts published yet. |
| Polygon | ERC-20 (planned) | Announced launch chain. |
| Stellar | Stellar asset (planned) | Announced launch chain. |
| Aptos | Fungible asset (planned) | Announced launch chain. |
Always verify contract addresses against the issuer’s official documentation before use — lookalike tokens with identical symbols are a common scam vector.