Visa, Mastercard and BlackRock Just Built a Stablecoin: Here's What Changes

Last updated: 19 August 2026. Open USD has not launched. The partner list, exact reserve split and blockchain choice are all still subject to change, so treat the figures below as a snapshot rather than a settled outcome.

For years, people in emerging markets turned to stablecoins because their local currencies were failing them. The naira, the peso and the lira all lost huge chunks of value in the last few years, and dollar-pegged tokens like USDT became a practical way to save and get paid, while Wall Street mostly watched from the sidelines.

That changed on 30 June 2026, when more than 140 companies, including Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, Coinbase, BlackRock and BNY, announced a new dollar stablecoin called Open USD. It is not the first attempt by big finance to build a digital dollar. But the guest list, and the way the token is structured, made this one impossible to ignore.

What is Open USD?

Open USD (ticker OUSD) is a dollar-pegged stablecoin run by an independent company called Open Standard, according to coverage from Forrester and other outlets that tracked the launch. It is led by Zach Abrams, who co-founded Bridge, the stablecoin infrastructure firm Stripe bought for $1.1 billion in October 2024. Open Standard has said the token will go live later in 2026, so for now it is an announcement with a very large guest list, not something you can hold or spend.

The backer list is genuinely broad. It spans card networks (Visa, Mastercard, American Express), payment platforms (Stripe, Adyen, Shopify), banks and asset managers (BlackRock, BNY, Standard Chartered, DBS), technology firms (Google) and crypto companies (Coinbase, Ripple). That mix is the whole point. Open Standard wants to be seen as neutral infrastructure rather than one company's product, even though the project is closely tied to Stripe through Abrams and Bridge.

How Open USD is Different from USDC and USDT

Every dollar stablecoin works roughly the same way underneath. An issuer holds cash and short-term US Treasuries as reserves, and every token in circulation is meant to be backed one for one by those reserves. That part is not new.

What is new is who gets paid. With Circle's USDC or Tether's USDT, the issuer keeps the interest earned on the reserves. That interest income is a large part of how both companies make money. Open USD flips that model. Businesses can mint and redeem OUSD with no fees and no volume caps, and the interest earned on reserves gets shared with the partners who distribute the token, minus a management fee, according to Open Standard's own description of the project. Decisions sit with a board made up of partner institutions rather than one issuer.

In plain terms, it is a shift from renting a stablecoin to co-owning one. If a payment company or bank is going to move billions of dollars through a token, sharing the reserve income gives it a reason to switch that has nothing to do with speed or technology and everything to do with money.

The Part The Headlines Missed: This Already Happened Once

The most interesting thing about Open USD is not that it is new. It is that it is catching up to something that was already true. Goldman Sachs has estimated that roughly two-thirds of the global stablecoin supply is held by people in emerging markets, and Chainalysis's adoption research has consistently ranked countries such as India, Nigeria and Vietnam among the world's heaviest crypto users, ahead of most wealthy nations.

The reasons are not complicated. Nigeria's naira lost close to 70% of its value against the dollar between June 2023 and early 2025, after the central bank abandoned its managed exchange rate. Argentina's inflation topped 200% in 2023. Turkey's lira lost more than half its purchasing power between 2020 and 2024. In each of these places, stablecoins became a way to hold savings in dollars without a US bank account, and a way to send money across borders without losing a large cut to fees.

The Philippines shows a slightly different version of the same story. Filipino workers abroad sent home a record $38.34 billion in 2024, worth 8.3% of the country's GDP, and traditional remittance fees in the region often run five to seven percent. Stablecoin-based remittance services have brought that cost below 1% in some corridors, which is why regulators there have started licensing peso-backed stablecoins for domestic use rather than fighting the trend.

So when Visa, Mastercard and BlackRock build a shared stablecoin network, they are not inventing a new use case. They are building institutional plumbing around something ordinary people in the Global South figured out on their own, largely out of necessity.

What This Means If You Are Not a Bank

Open USD is designed for businesses, not individuals. The zero-fee minting and redemption applies to partners moving large volumes, not to a freelancer getting paid $500 for a project. That part of the story will not change much for ordinary users even after the token launches.

What does matter for everyday people is the broader trend underneath it. As more large institutions build and compete on stablecoin rails, transfer costs across the whole market tend to fall, and more platforms start supporting dollar-denominated payments as a default option rather than an afterthought. For freelancers and small businesses working across borders, particularly in markets where local banking is slow, expensive, or unreliable, that competition is worth watching even if OUSD itself never touches a retail wallet directly. This is the gap that platforms like HostFi are built to close, bringing the practical benefits of digital dollars to individual users and small businesses rather than only the institutions signing consortium agreements.

Frequently asked questions

Is Open USD live yet? 

No. It was announced on 30 June 2026 with a launch planned for later in the year. No firm launch date had been confirmed as of this update.

Who backs Open USD? 

More than 140 companies, including Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, Coinbase, BlackRock, BNY and Standard Chartered. It is operated by Open Standard, led by Zach Abrams.

How is Open USD different from USDC? 

The main difference is who keeps the interest earned on reserves. USDC's issuer, Circle, keeps that income. Open USD is designed to share it with the partners that distribute the token.

Does Open USD replace USDT or USDC? 

Not yet, and possibly not at all. USDT and USDC together still account for the large majority of stablecoin supply and have years of exchange listings, liquidity, and user trust behind them. Open USD would need to convert its partner list into real transaction volume, which takes time.