Visa introduced a platform on 16 Jul that will let banks, fintechs and crypto firms mint, hold and transfer stablecoins inside a single Visa-run environment, open initially to a small group of test clients.
It starts with one token. Open USD (OUSD) is the dollar stablecoin announced on 30 Jun by Open Standard, a consortium of about 140 banks, payment firms and crypto companies that includes Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Stripe and Coinbase. Open Standard has said it will run natively on Solana first.
The Visa Stablecoin Platform (VSP) packages onchain wallet infrastructure through a new wallet-as-a-service offering, connectivity for minting and burning Open USD, and links into Visa's payment network, treasury and settlement systems, the company said in a statement. It is interoperable with Visa's existing stablecoin settlement, stablecoin-linked cards and money movement services rather than replacing them.
Visa didn't say how many institutions can use it. The platform is "initially available for beta testing with select clients," according to the release, and Visa said it will use what those clients learn to decide "how and where the platform scales to broader market availability." Issuing a stablecoin has become straightforward; getting anyone to use one has not.
"Stablecoins are opening up a new layer of programmable money, but for most institutions the hard part isn't the concept, it's the operational reality," said Jack Forestell, Visa's chief product and strategy officer.
Minting is free, the rails are not
Open USD earns Visa nothing directly. Open Standard says businesses will be able to mint and redeem it "at no cost and with no artificial limits on volume," and that partners "receive all the earnings from Open USD's reserves, less a small management fee." The token is governed by a board drawn from its partners rather than controlled by any one of them, a design meant to break the model in which the issuer keeps the float.
That leaves the rails. Visa's business has always been charging to move money it doesn't issue and VSP is where institutions would come to touch a token that costs nothing to make.
The platform is also narrower than what Visa already runs. Its stablecoin settlement pilot supports four stablecoins across nine blockchains: Circle's USDC and EURC, PayPal's PYUSD and Paxos' USDG, adding Base, Canton, Polygon and Tempo in April to Avalanche, Ethereum, Solana and Stellar. VSP starts with Open USD alone.
Those economics are not new. USDG has shared the bulk of its reserve yield with distribution partners including Robinhood, Kraken and Galaxy Digital since November 2024. USDG has around $3bn in supply, against roughly $73bn for USDC. The consortium model has been running for 18 months and has reached about 4% of the incumbent's scale.
What Open Standard adds is not the design. It's the size of the coalition, and Visa's distribution behind it.
Circle shares extend decline
Visa (V) traded around $361.60 at 15:00UTC, up 1.8% on the day, while the S&P 500 was up 0.1% and the Nasdaq-100 was down 0.9%. Circle (CRCL), which issues USDC, fell 2.8%.
Circle generates most of its revenue from assets backing USDC's reserves – the economics Open USD is built to give away. Circle's shares fell sharply when Open USD was announced on 30 Jun. USDG's 18 months at roughly 4% of USDC's supply is the case for thinking both moves overstate the threat.
Visa is also a design partner for Arc, the Layer 1 blockchain Circle has in public testnet.
Small base, growing quickly
Visa's settlement pilot reached a $7bn annualized run rate as of March, the company said in April, up 50% on the previous quarter. In December, it put the figure at a $3.5bn annualized run rate as of 30 Nov. It reported more than 160 stablecoin-linked card programmes live or in development in June, while Cross River Bank and Lead Bank became the first US banks to settle with Visa in USDC, over Solana, in December.
Visa reports third-quarter results on 28 Jul.
Sandmark contacted Visa for comment on the platform's scale, the status of Open USD and its relationship to USDG, but had not received a response by the time of publication.
