Visa, BlackRock and Coinbase back new consortium stablecoin OUSD
DeFi & Yields ·
Open Standard has unveiled Open USD, a stablecoin project backed by more than 140 companies spanning payments, banking and crypto, with launch expected later this year.
The roster of participants includes Visa, Stripe, Mastercard, BlackRock, BNY, Coinbase, Ripple, Google, Shopify, Bybit, OKX and Solana, according to Open Standard's announcement. Rather than being issued and controlled by a single company, OUSD is structured under a consortium-governance model in which partners share in reserve earnings after a small management fee and take part in governance decisions collectively.
The design departs from typical stablecoin economics in two other ways: minting and redemption will carry zero fees, and there will be no artificial cap on how much OUSD can be issued. Zach Abrams, co-founder and CEO of Stripe-owned Bridge, has been named founding CEO of Open Standard, positioning the entity to run day-to-day operations of the consortium while governance authority is distributed among member firms.
The involvement of Visa, Stripe and Mastercard alongside asset manager BlackRock and custodian BNY signals an attempt to bridge traditional payment rails and institutional finance with crypto-native infrastructure from Coinbase, Ripple, Bybit, OKX and Solana. Reporting across the cluster has tracked the story in stages, from early word that Stripe, Visa and Mastercard were backing an unnamed stablecoin platform, to Coinbase's participation being described as still under exploration, to the formal unveiling of OUSD with its full partner list and governance terms.
What remains unspecified is the exact reserve composition backing OUSD, the technical chains or networks it will run on, and how governance votes will be weighted among the more than 140 participating companies. Also unclear is how the zero-fee minting and redemption model will be sustained financially once the management fee is applied to reserve earnings. With a launch targeted for later this year, further detail on custody arrangements, regulatory registration and the specific role each named partner will play is expected to surface as Open Standard moves toward going live.