Open Standard launches OUSD stablecoin backed by Coinbase, Stripe, Visa, and Mastercard

Open Standard has launched its OUSD stablecoin across Ethereum, Solana, Base and Tempo, bringing to market a new dollar token backed by some of the largest names in payments and crypto.

Coinbase, Mastercard, Shopify, Stripe and Visa have invested as the company’s first five founding partners, each receiving an equal initial equity stake. Together, the group has committed more than $1 billion to help establish OUSD liquidity over the coming months.

OUSD is issued by Bridge, the stablecoin infrastructure company acquired by Stripe for $1.1 billion in 2024. Its reserves are held with BlackRock, Lead Bank and BNY, with monthly attestations planned.

Open Standard first unveiled the project in June with more than 140 partners. That network has since grown to more than 200 financial institutions, fintechs, banks and other businesses, including UBS, SBI Holdings and Jeeves.

The company is positioning OUSD for use across banking, cross-border payments, settlement, institutional trading and lending rather than simply as another dollar token for crypto markets.

“We want to be the most useful stablecoin, the same way the U.S. dollar is useful,” CEO Zach Abrams told CoinDesk. Abrams previously co-founded and led Bridge before its acquisition by Stripe.

Open Standard is also taking a different approach to how the economics of the stablecoin are distributed.

Partners can earn rewards based on the OUSD supply and transaction activity they generate, while Open Standard plans to distribute a large portion of its equity to founders and network participants over the next four to five years based on their contribution to the network’s growth.

Founding partners will not receive a separate preferred share of stablecoin revenue. Instead, they will participate under the same usage-based framework as other qualifying partners.

The model contrasts with larger incumbents such as Tether and Circle, where reserve income is largely retained by the issuer or shared through bilateral distribution agreements.

OUSD enters a stablecoin market worth more than $300 billion and still dominated by Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC.

Businesses can begin integrating OUSD through infrastructure from BVNK, Stripe and Visa, while Coinbase support is scheduled to begin October 1. The integrations cover functions including settlement, payment orchestration, trading, foreign exchange, wallets and cards.

Minting and redeeming OUSD will be available at a 1:1 dollar conversion rate without mint or burn fees.

The stablecoin will also be available across centralized and decentralized trading venues, beginning with Coinbase, Kraken and Uniswap.

Open Standard says its broader goal is to make stablecoins disappear into the background of everyday financial products, with Abrams arguing that success will come when users interact with digital dollars without needing to think about the underlying infrastructure.