More than 100 financial firms have formed the Open Standard consortium and announced the dollar stablecoin OpenUSD. Among them are Visa, Stripe, BNY, BlackRock and Mastercard. The launch is planned for the second half of 2026, while Tether, Circle and PayPal are deliberately left out.
Open Standard is a newly formed industry consortium that aims to issue a shared dollar stablecoin. No single issuer should capture the added value alone. A stablecoin is a digital payment instrument pegged 1:1 to the US dollar that can be transferred over blockchain networks. The interim CEO is Zach Abrams, co-founder and CEO of Bridge, a stablecoin infrastructure firm owned by Stripe. The more than 100 founding partners include fintechs, traditional payment networks, crypto firms and banks. Short-term US Treasuries and cash fully back OpenUSD, which carries the ticker OUSD. Minting and redemption are free of charge. The yield from the reserves is then distributed proportionally among the participants after deducting a management fee.
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Tether, Circle and PayPal remain on the outside
What stands out most is who is not involved. Tether, Circle and PayPal are missing, precisely the three issuers whose dollar stablecoins are already established in the market. Tether's USDT reaches a market capitalization of 184.7 billion USD and ranks third among the largest cryptocurrencies. Circle's USDC, however, follows with 73.7 billion USD in fifth place. Together, the two largest stablecoins thus account for around 258 billion USD, and Open Standard targets exactly this market.
The market priced in this signal immediately. As a result, Circle's shares fell 8.2 percent on the day of the announcement. Investors saw a direct threat to the business model. PayPal has additionally offered its own stablecoin PYUSD since August 2023, though it holds only a small market share. None of the three established providers belong to the new consortium.
Open Standard therefore positions itself not as a complement but as a structural alternative. The participating payment networks will act as competitors to the established issuers, instead of merely using their stablecoins as customers. In the stablecoin market, the balance of power is shifting toward the large payment processors. More than 100 companies from fintech, traditional banking and the crypto sector are joining forces. This gives the push a weight that individual issuers can hardly achieve. The market potential is considerable, especially since McKinsey estimates the global annual transaction volume in stablecoins at 27 trillion USD.
How the OpenUSD stablecoin shares reserve income
Liquid assets back OpenUSD entirely, specifically short-term US Treasuries and cash. The consortium also waives fees on issuance and redemption of the tokens and sets no artificial issuance limits. Companies can therefore scale the token without friction, which is a central argument in payments. Thus the model differs clearly from the established issuers, which generate income at exactly these points.
The central difference, however, lies in the economic model. With USDT and USDC, a single issuer keeps the interest income from the reserves for itself. OpenUSD, by contrast, distributes this income proportionally among the participants after deducting a small management fee. Governance sits with an independent entity that has a board of partner companies, so that no single issuer holds control. Moreover, Carolyn Weinberg, head of product and innovation at BNY, points to the neutral governance and the shared economic model. She sees in them a possible foundation for the next growth phase in digital assets.
Stripe provides the necessary reach as the anchor integration. The payment processor intends to use OpenUSD as the standard for stablecoin payments on its platform after the launch. Later, the remaining partners should also integrate OpenUSD into their own payment systems. At the same time, the reserve structure already meets the requirements of the GENIUS Act. This law mandates full backing with liquid assets.
"Existing stablecoins have great strengths, but to use them at business scale, companies need something that is open, low-cost, high-throughput, broadly accessible and aligned with their interests." - Zach Abrams, interim CEO of Open Standard and co-founder of Bridge
Stripe and Mastercard already own the infrastructure
Open Standard does not build on a letter of intent but on already existing infrastructure. Through Bridge, Stripe owns the stablecoin infrastructure whose co-founder Abrams now leads the consortium. The company also owns the wallet developer Privy. Klarna furthermore already uses the Bridge infrastructure for the announced KlarnaUSD. The token currently runs on a testnet, while its public mainnet launch is planned for 2026. Investors valued the payment processor at 159 billion USD in February 2026. In total, the company processed a volume of 1.9 trillion USD in 2025, 34 percent more than the previous year.
Mastercard meanwhile pursues a dual strategy. The group is on one hand a participant in Open Standard. On the other hand, it is buying the stablecoin provider BVNK for up to 1.8 billion USD. The acquisition, announced in March 2026, aims to connect on-chain payments with traditional fiat rails. It should close toward the end of 2026. The further confirmed partners also include BlackRock, Coinbase, American Express, Standard Chartered, DBS, BBVA, Fireblocks, Ripple, Shopify, Chime, US Bank and Google parent Alphabet. The industry ultimately absorbs the stablecoin infrastructure instead of being displaced by it.
Bridge applies for bank license before GENIUS Act takes effect
The regulatory framework comes from the GENIUS Act, which President Trump signed on 18 July 2025. It is the first comprehensive stablecoin regulation in the United States. The acronym stands for Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act. The law first requires full backing with liquid assets such as US dollars or short-term Treasuries. Furthermore, it mandates monthly public disclosure of the reserves as well as compliance with AML rules. It finally takes effect on 18 January 2027 or 120 days after the implementing rules are adopted.
Bridge has in parallel applied for a National Bank Trust Charter. This step would let it operate as a regulated stablecoin issuer under the GENIUS Act. Thus the Stripe subsidiary secures a regulatory foundation for OpenUSD even before the framework fully takes hold. The move shows that the consortium deliberately wants to anchor the token within the new supervisory framework.
The planned launch in the second half of 2026 therefore falls before the law takes effect. Structurally, however, OpenUSD already meets the requirements today. The backing of short-term Treasuries and cash corresponds to the GENIUS requirements. The consortium thus moves into the lead operationally and is regulatorily secured from the start.
