Visa Launches Stablecoin Platform To Scale Institutional $OUSD Adoption

A Consortium Stablecoin Built on Shared Economics

@Visa has joined Open Standard, an independent organisation backed by more than 140 companies, to help launch Open USD ($OUSD), a new dollar-pegged stablecoin targeting institutional payments and settlement. Open Standard publicly unveiled $OUSD on June 30, 2026, positioning it as infrastructure for global payments and settlement rather than just another digital dollar.

"Today, we announced Visa is joining Open Standard alongside Stripe, Coinbase, Mastercard, American Express, BlackRock, U.S. Bank, BBVA, Standard Chartered and 100-plus initial partners with the mission of issuing Open USD, a shared stablecoin designed for the global financial system," Visa's head of crypto, Cuy Sheffield, wrote on X.

$OUSD was designed around the economic principle of shared ownership instead of proprietary control, separating the economic value of money from the ownership of money. Businesses will be able to mint and redeem the token at no cost and with no caps on volume, while nearly all of the interest earned on the assets backing $OUSD will flow to partners after a management fee, rather than to a single issuer.

Visa's Role and the Competitive Stakes

Participants span payment operators including Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Stripe, and Discover; banks such as BlackRock, BNY, Standard Chartered, BBVA, and Mizuho; tech giants Google, Samsung, IBM, and Shopify; and crypto firms Coinbase, Bybit, Ripple, OKX, Gemini, Fireblocks, Aave, Polygon, and Solana Labs.

Stripe said it is making $OUSD the default stablecoin for businesses transacting on its platform, while Coinbase confirmed $OUSD is coming to Base and other chains later this year. $OUSD is set to go live across Solana, Stellar, Base, Polygon, and other chains later in 2026.

The launch has already rattled incumbents. Markets read the announcement as a threat almost immediately, with Circle shares falling sharply on the day, with several outlets reporting a drop of between 15 and 17 percent. Tether's USDT accounted for roughly 62 percent of the stablecoin market in April, with Circle's USDC holding around 25 percent.

Not everyone is convinced the model will succeed at scale. ARK Invest research director Lorenzo Valente has raised doubts about whether a consortium of roughly 500 competing entities can move fast enough, pointing to a cold-start liquidity problem, a lack of established trading pairs, and governance friction from too many stakeholders. Still, the breadth of institutional commitment signals that the battle for stablecoin infrastructure has moved well beyond crypto-native players.

Sources:
The Next Web: Visa, Mastercard and 140 firms launch Open USD
The Block: Visa, Stripe, Coinbase and more join Open USD stablecoin
PYMNTS: Open USD Just Turned the Stablecoin Race Into an Ecosystem Contest