Open USD Stablecoin Launches With $1 Billion Backing From Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, Coinbase and Shopify
Open USD, a new stablecoin backed by more than 1 billion dollars in launch liquidity, has gone live across Ethereum, Base, Solana, and Tempo, with Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, Coinbase, and Shopify named as equal founding partners.
A genuinely different ownership structure
Unlike most major stablecoins, Open USD splits ownership equally among its five founding partners rather than concentrating control with a single issuer. Chief executive Zach Abrams has said the majority of the company’s equity will be distributed over the next four to five years to founders and network partners based on their actual contribution to OUSD supply and transaction activity, with no special revenue carve-out reserved for the founding partners themselves.
How the economics work
Businesses can mint and redeem Open USD at par with no fees and no volume caps, while participating companies collect most of the income generated by the reserves backing the token. That model is a meaningful departure from larger incumbents like Tether and Circle, where reserve income is generally retained by the issuer or shared only through narrow bilateral distribution agreements rather than spread across a broad partner network.
Who actually issues and backs it
Open USD is issued by Bridge, the stablecoin infrastructure company Stripe acquired for 1.1 billion dollars in 2024. Reserves are held across BlackRock, Lead Bank, and BNY, with monthly attestations planned to verify that backing on an ongoing basis.
What this means for the stablecoin market
The global stablecoin sector already exceeds 300 billion dollars in value, dominated heavily by Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC. A coalition this large, spanning payment networks, an exchange, and a major e-commerce platform, launching a shared-ownership stablecoin suggests the industry’s biggest non-issuer players see more value in jointly building distribution infrastructure than in continuing to simply plug into existing stablecoins built by someone else.
Frequently asked questions
Is Open USD available to retail users directly? The initial structure centers on business minting and redemption through the founding partners rather than a direct retail-facing product.
Does Tether or Circle have any stake in Open USD? No, the five founding partners are Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, Coinbase, and Shopify, with no ownership stake held by existing stablecoin issuers.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Stablecoins carry their own risks, including reserve and redemption risk.