Stripe, Coinbase, Mastercard and Visa Back Open USD Stablecoin as OUSD Goes Live

Open Standard said its Open USD (OUSD) stablecoin is now live, with integration paths through Stripe, Coinbase, Mastercard and Visa. For high-risk merchants and PSPs, the practical point is simple: OUSD is being positioned as a dollar rail with no-cost mint and burn, which means less friction around conversion in and out of fiat.

1. Open Standard said in a Wednesday, Sept. 30 blog post that OUSD is live. The company described it as a “money movement stablecoin” and said businesses can get started through four integration paths, including Stripe, Coinbase, Mastercard and Visa.
2. According to Open Standard, each integration path offers APIs and tools for settlement, payment orchestration, trading, FX, wallets, cards and other services. All paths support mint and burn at a 1:1 USD conversion rate, at no cost.
3. Open Standard first announced OUSD on June 30 and said it would go live later in the year. At that point, the company said several dozen companies had already signed up, including Visa, Google, Mastercard, Coinbase, American Express, DoorDash and Plasma, the blockchain infrastructure provider for instant money movement.
4. Stripe said in its own Wednesday press release that OUSD is now among the stablecoin options available to businesses on Stripe’s financial infrastructure. Businesses can mint and burn OUSD at no cost, and partners that adopt and transact with OUSD can earn rewards, according to Stripe.
5. Stripe also said developers can build with OUSD using Bridge orchestration, Privy embedded wallets and Stripe Issuing for stablecoin cards. Businesses can hold OUSD in Stripe Treasury, spend that balance with stablecoin cards, send OUSD to crypto wallets in more than 100 countries, and use OUSD to fund Stripe Treasury accounts.

Open Standard said OUSD is meant to be an alternative to stablecoins that charge variable fees to convert in and out of fiat currencies. In other words, the pitch is not “new token, new religion”; it is “same dollar exposure, fewer conversion tolls.” For PSPs, that is the part to watch, because fee-free mint and burn changes the economics of settlement, treasury flows and card-linked stablecoin products.