TL;DR:
- Open USD is a new stablecoin backed by a consortium of more than 140 financial and crypto companies, including Visa, Mastercard and BlackRock.
- Partners can mint and redeem tokens at no cost and receive reserve earnings minus a small management fee.
- The model directly targets the structural problems of current stablecoins: prohibitive fees, yield capture by the issuer and unilateral governance.
Open Standard launched Open USD, a stablecoin backed by a consortium of more than 140 companies across the financial sector and the crypto industry. The proposal is not simply another dollar-pegged token, but a governance and economic model designed specifically to correct what companies have criticized for years about existing stablecoins.
The project rests on three pillars. Partners mint and redeem at no cost and without artificial volume limits. Earnings generated by the underlying reserves are distributed among participants, minus a small management fee, rather than remaining exclusively in the hands of the issuer.
Introducing Open USD: a stablecoin built for the internet economy, designed by the businesses growing it.https://t.co/jqgDRs6mKf
— Open Standard (@openstandard) June 30, 2026
Governance falls to Open Standard, an independent company whose board is composed of the partners themselves, not a single unilateral entity. Zach Abrams, founding CEO of Open Standard, defined Open USD as a stablecoin built for the internet economy, designed by the companies that make it grow.
Open USD: The Currency for the Online Economy
The list of those backing Open USD is what truly reveals the weight of the initiative. Visa and Mastercard, the two most important card networks at a global scale, signal that traditional payment rails view stablecoin infrastructure as complementary, not as a threat.
Stripe, one of the largest payment processors in the world, offers Open USD a direct path into everyday consumer and merchant transactions. BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, contributes the most visible institutional credential of the group and already operates tokenized fund products.
BNY, one of the largest banks in the world, is key to institutional confidence in how reserves will be custodied. American Express, Discover, Coinbase, Ripple, Solana, Western Union and MoneyGram complete a map spanning card networks, crypto exchanges, blockchain infrastructure and the two largest global remittance companies.
Carolyn Weinberg, Chief Product and Innovation Officer at BNY, offered the most substantive market estimate of the launch: stablecoins could grow to $1.5 trillion by 2030. Jorn Lambert, Chief Product Officer at Mastercard, framed the initiative as a continuation of the principle that made the internet work: shared, interoperable infrastructure on which anyone can build.
A Direct Challenge to Incumbent Issuers
The participant group also includes dozens of regional and national institutions across Asia-Pacific, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa, positioning Open USD as a genuinely international proposal from day one, underpinned by banking relationships already established in each region.
For issuers already established in the market, the Open USD model exerts a fierce and direct competitive offer: it eliminates fees and distributes the yield from reserves, attacking the core of the current business. For companies building on stablecoins, it inverts the economic equation.
