Visa, Stripe, BlackRock Among 140+ Backers of New Open USD Stablecoin

Backers include Visa, Stripe, Mastercard, BlackRock, BNY – the custody bank formerly known as Bank of New York Mellon – Coinbase, Solana, Ripple, Google and Shopify, among dozens of partners across the financial services and technology industries. 

Open Standard said the stablecoin is designed to let businesses mint and redeem at no cost and without volume limits, with partners sharing in the yield generated by the reserves backing the token, after a "small management fee" to cover operating expenses.

Threat to Circle, specifically

The structure challenges how the two largest stablecoins, Tether's USDT and Circle's USD Coin (USDC), currently operate: both are issued and controlled by a single company, which keeps the yield on reserves itself. Circle shares (CRCL) were down 8.8% intraday as of 16:10UTC on 30 Jun, with the stock continuing to move through the session.

The exposure isn't abstract. Circle's revenue comes overwhelmingly from interest earned on the Treasuries and cash-like assets backing its flagship stablecoin, while USDC holders receive none of that yield themselves. 

Open USD partially inverts that model by sharing reserve income with corporate partners that use it. Every dollar of USDC volume that migrates to Open USD could represent a dollar of Treasury yield Circle might no longer earn.

The risk extends beyond revenue. Visa, Mastercard and Stripe, three of Open USD's most prominent backers, have already established USDC settlement infrastructure in place, and have functioned as some of Circle's most important distribution partners. If they default to Open USD instead, Circle loses not just yield income, but the reach of the networks that made USDC widely usable in the first place. Neither Circle nor Tether is among Open Standard's partners.

The risk extends beyond revenue. Visa, Mastercard and Stripe – three of Open USD's most prominent backers – have already built settlement infrastructure around USDC and rank among Circle's most important distribution partners. If they instead default to Open USD, Circle could lose not only reserve yield, but also access to the payment networks that helped make USDC widely distributed in the first place. Neither Circle nor Tether is among Open Standard's partners.

What's actually new 

Much of what Open Standard is offering already exists in some form. Circle and Tether both provide fee-free minting and redemption to large institutional clients above certain volume thresholds, and big counterparties can often negotiate revenue-sharing arrangements with existing issuers privately. 

What Open Standard is proposing is less a new capability than a different structure: rather than each partner negotiating its own bilateral deal with a single issuer, more than 140 competing companies, banks, card networks, crypto exchanges and remittance firms among them, would share ownership of the same rails by default. Whether that structural difference translates into a meaningfully better product for users, rather than simply a more crowded and slower-moving group to satisfy, is the question the launch will have to answer.

Regulation changes the equation 

The timing follows a shift in the US regulatory landscape, albeit an uneven one. The GENIUS Act, signed into law on 18 Jul 2025, established the first federal framework specifically governing stablecoin issuance and reserves, giving large regulated institutions, banks and card networks among them, the legal clarity to participate directly in stablecoin infrastructure rather than treating it as a crypto-native curiosity to watch from a distance. 

The broader CLARITY Act, which would set rules for digital asset market structure more generally, remains stalled in Congress, meaning stablecoins specifically have moved ahead of the rest of the crypto regulatory picture. 

Open Standard, citing a separate industry report, also pointed to scale: stablecoin transaction volumes are approaching those of the ACH network, the US's existing bank-to-bank payment rail, a threshold at which the costs of relying on a single external issuer become more material to large users than when volumes were smaller.

Zach Abrams, the interim chief executive of Open Standard and co-founder of Bridge – the stablecoin infrastructure company Stripe acquired last year – said existing stablecoins work well in principle but aren't built for the fee structure, throughput or aligned incentives that businesses need to use them at an industrial scale.

BNY's chief product and innovation officer, Carolyn Weinberg, said she expects the broader stablecoin market to grow to $1.5tn by 2030, describing the combination of neutral governance and shared economics as "a unique combination that has potential" to reshape the next phase of digital asset growth.

Untested governance model

Whether that governance model works in practice is the open question. Committees made up of competing companies, including banks, payment networks and crypto exchanges with materially different interests, have a mixed record of moving quickly or staying aligned once a project moves from announcement to operation. 

Open Standard hasn't disclosed how disagreements among its more than 140 partners will be resolved, how decisions will be made if interests diverge or what happens if a major backer leaves. 

Open USD is expected to go live later this year.