Key highlights
- Open USD (OUSD) is a new US dollar stablecoin governed and operated by Open Standard, an independent company, and described by Open Standard as the first stablecoin designed as open infrastructure.
- More than 140 companies have signed on as Open USD partners, including BlackRock, Coinbase, Visa, Stripe, and DBS.
- Open Standard says Open USD shares nearly all reserve economics with the companies that grow its adoption, returning most reserve revenue (minus a small management fee) to participants.
- Open Standard says Open USD has no fees to mint or redeem, even at scale, and is governed by companies in the collective interest rather than a single entity.
- Support from major financial and tech names signals that stablecoin payments are moving further into mainstream infrastructure.
- For builders, Open USD adds another set of rails to issue cards, manage spend, and move money across borders, alongside stablecoins businesses already use.
This article explains what Open USD is, how Open Standard says it differs from existing stablecoins, and what it changes for businesses that want to issue cards and move money on stablecoin rails. Open USD is new, so the practical details will firm up as the network goes live.
What is Open USD?
Open USD (ticker OUSD) is a US dollar stablecoin governed and operated by Open Standard, an independent company. More than 140 companies have partnered on Open USD, with prominent names like Visa, Stripe, Mastercard, BlackRock, Coinbase, Alphabet, OCBC, and BNY Mellon.
Like any dollar-pegged stablecoin, Open USD is a digital token designed to hold a steady value against the US dollar and to move across blockchains.
Open Standard positions it as a shared stablecoin for global financial activity, and as the first stablecoin built to work as open infrastructure rather than a single company's product.
Who is behind Open USD?
From Open Standard's official partners page:
What makes Open USD different from other stablecoins?
Open USD is built around a different economic and governance model, and is said to be GENIUS Act compliant, according to Open Standard. Here are the differentiating features of Open USD:
Compliance-first reserves. Open Standard says Open USD's reserves are held at major financial institutions and managed in line with US regulatory requirements, namely the GENIUS Act. For a bank or fintech weighing which stablecoin to adopt, operating within this framework adds a layer of legitimacy, which could encourage wider adoption.
A new economic model. Open Standard says it shares nearly all of the reserve economics with the companies that drive adoption, returning most of the revenue the reserves generate, minus a small management fee, to the participants who adopt and distribute it.
Open, neutral governance. Open Standard says governance is led by the companies using Open USD, acting in the collective interest rather than as a single entity, with Open Standard operating it as an independent company.
No fees to mint or redeem. Open Standard lists zero minting and redemption fees, even at scale, as a core property. Minting and redemption are how businesses move in and out of a stablecoin, so the cost of those actions affects the economics of using it at volume.
Built for scale. Open Standard describes Open USD as infrastructure designed to handle millions of transactions at once for global financial workloads.
For comparison, most established dollar stablecoins are issued and governed by a single company that retains the reserve economics. Open USD changes the economics and governance while operating within the GENIUS Act framework, the kind of regulatory grounding that could make institutions more comfortable adopting it. Whether that shifts day-to-day economics for a given business will depend on the final terms once the network is live.
Why a Visa-backed stablecoin matters for payments
Open USD's partners include several payments and finance heavyweights, from fintechs to banks. Visa is one useful illustration of why that matters for reach: a global payment network connects millions of merchants and the banks that settle between them, so a stablecoin tied to that footprint can move from widely held on-chain to widely accepted at the point of sale. Visa has been building in the space directly too: by April 2026 its stablecoin settlement program reached nine blockchains at a $7 billion annualized run rate. Those figures describe Visa's general program rather than Open USD, but they show how far a network of Visa's scale can carry stablecoin acceptance.
What Open USD changes for the stablecoin ecosystem
Businesses already use stablecoins such as USDC, USDT, and PAXG for payments, settlement, and treasury, and Open USD enters a market those incumbents still dominate. What is different is how it competes. Established stablecoins compete largely as individual tokens, each tied to a single issuer that keeps the reserve economics; Open USD competes as a shared network, where its consortium of more than 140 companies shares in the reserve economics, so partners have a reason to distribute it rather than a rival coin. Some industry observers frame this as the contest moving from the token itself to the ecosystem around it, which could put single-issuer stablecoins under a new kind of pressure.
For most businesses, though, the practical question is not which single stablecoin wins. It is how to work across several without rebuilding infrastructure each time.
What Open USD means for builders and businesses
For builders, Open USD adds another rail to leverage. Open Standard positions Open USD as open to any business moving money, and points to use cases for financial institutions, fintechs, payment service providers, card issuers, merchants, platforms, marketplaces, exchanges, and agentic commerce.
On stablecoin rails like Open USD, a business can do three things that traditional banking makes slow or expensive. It can issue cards funded by stablecoins, so teams spend at regular merchants while the treasury stays on-chain. It can manage company spend with real-time visibility instead of waiting on bank statements. And it can move money across borders with faster settlement than correspondent banking wires.
Open Standard explicitly names agentic commerce as a use case, describing Open USD as a way for software agents to make programmatic payments instantly. Agentic payments, where software agents initiate and settle transactions on their own, suit stablecoins because they settle on-chain and around the clock. Open USD expands the set of rails available for that kind of automated money movement.
What It Means For Reap
Reap is one of the more than 140 companies named as an Open USD launch partner. As a Visa Principal Member, Reap issues cards through a single API and dashboard, with a direct settlement relationship with Visa rather than through a sponsor bank. That makes Reap the infrastructure layer builders can use to put Open USD to work: issuing branded cards, settling cross-border spend, and powering agentic payment flows, across multiple stablecoin rails with compliance built in.
The part Reap is most focused on is agentic payments. As AI-driven workflows begin to handle real financial transactions, stablecoin infrastructure becomes the backbone, and Open USD, built for programmability and scale, fits that direction. To understand the mechanics behind on-chain settlement, see how stablecoin payments work for businesses.
Conclusion
Open USD is a new US dollar stablecoin from Open Standard, built for how businesses move money at scale. Open Standard positions it on a different model: nearly all reserve economics shared with the companies that grow adoption, no fees to mint or redeem, and governance in the collective interest rather than a single issuer. For builders, the immediate value is optionality. Open USD adds another rail to issue cards, manage spend, and move money, alongside the stablecoins businesses already use.
FAQ
Does Visa have a stablecoin?
No, Visa has not issued its own stablecoin. It is one of more than 140 companies partnering on Open USD, a consortium stablecoin from Open Standard. Separately, Visa runs its own stablecoin settlement program that lets partners settle in stablecoins across multiple blockchains, independent of any single coin.
How is Open USD different from other stablecoins?
Open Standard positions Open USD on a different model. Open Standard says it shares nearly all reserve economics with companies that grow adoption, charges no fees to mint or redeem even at scale, and is governed by companies in the collective interest rather than a single entity. Final terms apply once the network is live.
What can businesses do with Open USD?
Open Standard describes Open USD as open to any business moving money, with use cases spanning payments, payouts, trading, platforms, and agentic commerce. On these rails, businesses can issue stablecoin-funded cards, manage company spend, and move money across borders with faster settlement than traditional bank wires.
Disclaimer
Open USD is newly announced, and its practical and operational details are still developing. This article may therefore not contain the most accurate or complete information, and details may change as the network goes live.
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