What is Open USD (OUSD)?

A Stablecoin With an Unusual Backer List

Most stablecoins are issued by a single company that holds the reserves, collects the interest on those reserves, and keeps the profit. Open USD flips that arrangement. Announced in 2026, it arrived not from one issuer but from a coalition of more than 140 of the largest names in payments, banking, technology and crypto, all agreeing to share the economics between themselves.

The list reads like a who’s who of global finance: Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, American Express, BlackRock, BNY, Coinbase and Google among them. That breadth of support, on day one, is what made the launch stand out from the steady stream of new digital dollars.

Open USD at a Glance

Open USD, ticker OUSD, is a stablecoin pegged one-to-one to the US dollar. Like other fiat-backed stablecoins, each token is meant to be redeemable for a dollar held in reserve. If the concept of a price-stable crypto token is new to you, our explainer on how stablecoins work covers the mechanics that OUSD shares with USDT, USDC and the rest.

What sets OUSD apart is its operating model rather than its peg. It is run by Open Standard, an independent company whose board is made up of the stablecoin’s own partners. The project describes itself as the first stablecoin built as open infrastructure, meaning the businesses that move volume through it also help govern it and earn from it.

How Open USD Came About

The launch landed in the middle of a stablecoin boom. After the US GENIUS Act was signed into law in 2025, establishing a federal framework for dollar-backed tokens, a wave of new entrants followed. Stablecoin transaction volume had grown to rival the ACH network that settles most US bank transfers, and the total market had pushed past 300 billion dollars, with some analysts projecting trillions by the end of the decade.

Open Standard’s interim chief executive is Zach Abrams, co-founder of the stablecoin startup Bridge, which Stripe acquired for 1.1 billion dollars in 2025. The pitch he and the founding partners made was simple: existing stablecoins charge too much to mint and redeem at scale, keep the reserve income for themselves, and give the businesses building on top of them little say over the roadmap. Open USD was designed as an answer to those three complaints.

How Open USD Works

OUSD is intended to be blockchain agnostic, issued across several networks rather than tied to one. Beyond that, three design choices define how it operates.

Minting and Redemption

Businesses can create new OUSD by depositing dollars and redeem it back to dollars at par. The model removes the minting and redemption fees that larger stablecoins charge, and it sets no cap on volume. For a payment processor or exchange moving billions, removing that friction is the core practical draw.

Reserves and Shared Yield

The dollars backing OUSD are held at major regulated financial institutions, in line with US rules. The interest those reserves generate, minus a small management fee that funds Open Standard’s compliance and operations, is returned to the partners who adopt and distribute the token. This yield-sharing structure is the sharpest break from the incumbents, where the issuer keeps that income. It echoes the broader trend of users expecting a cut of reserve revenue, a theme we cover in our look at stablecoin yields.

Collaborative Governance

Rather than one firm setting the rules, a board drawn from the partner companies governs OUSD’s design and operation. The stated aim is that decisions serve the collective interest of the ecosystem instead of a single controlling shareholder.

Who Is Behind Open USD

The partner roster spans nearly every corner of finance. Payment networks include Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Stripe. Banks and asset managers include BlackRock, BNY, Standard Chartered, U.S. Bank, BBVA and DBS. Technology platforms include Google, Shopify, IBM and DoorDash. Crypto-native firms include Coinbase, Ripple, Aave, MetaMask and Morpho.

On the infrastructure side, OUSD was slated to launch across multiple blockchains later in 2026. Reporting named Solana as a confirmed day-one network, alongside chains such as Base, Tempo, Stellar and Polygon, though the exact lineup was still settling at announcement. Stripe indicated it would make OUSD the default stablecoin for businesses on its platform.

Potential Advantages

• Fee-free minting and redemption with no volume caps, which lowers the cost of moving money at scale.
• Reserve yield shared with the businesses that drive adoption, rather than retained by a single issuer.
• Neutral, partner-led governance that reduces dependence on any one company’s roadmap.
• An exceptionally broad coalition of banks, card networks and crypto firms, which could accelerate real-world acceptance.
• Reserves held at regulated institutions under the post-GENIUS Act framework.

Risks and Open Questions

• It had not launched at the time of announcement, so the live product, contracts and reserves were unproven.
• Past industry consortiums have struggled to ship, and coordinating 140-plus stakeholders is hard.
• The exact blockchain lineup, reserve composition and custodians were not fully detailed publicly.
• Incumbents Tether and Circle hold enormous network effects and liquidity that a newcomer must overcome.
• Shared governance can slow decision-making and create disputes among competing partners.

Open USD vs. USDT and USDC

The clearest way to understand OUSD is to set it against the two stablecoins that have long dominated the market. Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC together account for the large majority of stablecoin supply, and both follow the classic model where the issuer keeps the reserve interest. For a deeper look at the regulated incumbent, see our guide to the USDC stablecoin.

The reaction from incumbents was telling. Circle’s share price slid on the news, while Tether’s chief executive welcomed the competition, writing that “Player 2 has entered the game.” Notably, Circle, Tether and PayPal, the three largest existing dollar-stablecoin issuers, were not among the launch partners.

Why Open USD Matters in 2026

Open USD is a test of whether a shared, yield-distributing model can challenge the single-issuer approach that has defined stablecoins so far. If even a fraction of its 140-plus partners route real volume through it, OUSD could quickly become a major settlement asset for payments, exchanges and on-chain finance. The breadth of support and the aligned incentives are the strongest arguments in its favor.

The open questions are just as real: execution at this scale is unproven, and a coalition this large can move slowly. For now, the smart move is to watch how the launch unfolds and which partners follow through. You can read the project’s own framing in the official Open USD announcement, and explore more digital dollars and pegged assets in our stablecoins coverage.

Watch: Open USD Explained

Prefer to watch? Here is a two-minute explainer covering what Open USD is, how it works, who is behind it, and how it compares to USDT and USDC.