Open Standard’s OUSD stablecoin goes live with support from 140+ banks, fintechs and payment firms

Open Standard has launched OUSD, a stablecoin built around a shared-economics model that gives network participants a direct incentive to use it. For PSPs and banks, the interesting part is not the branding; it is the distribution and economics: Mastercard, Visa, Stripe and Coinbase are already on the rail, and $1 billion of initial liquidity was provided on day one.

1. Open Standard says OUSD is now live, three months after the initiative was first announced and less than a week after it formalized its governance structure, founding partners and leadership. CEO Zach Abrams said on X: “Stablecoins should be better money. Today, they fall short. OUSD is built to change that.”
2. The consortium now includes more than 140 banks, fintechs, payment companies and crypto firms. Open Standard says the stablecoin’s top use cases are settlement, institutional trading, corporate treasury, and fintech and neobank infrastructure.
3. The model is the part to watch. OUSD uses shared economics, rewarding network participants based on the volume they drive across the network rather than assets under management. That is a different incentive structure from the issuer models popularized by Circle and Tether, and Keybanc analysts said it could put the most pressure on Circle if OUSD gains traction.
4. Open Standard says companies can build on OUSD through Mastercard’s BVNK, Stripe, and the Visa Stablecoin Platform. On Stripe, OUSD will be the default stablecoin. Building on Coinbase will begin on October 1.
5. Mastercard, Visa, Stripe and Coinbase are the founding partners of Open Standard, and they provided $1 billion of initial liquidity for OUSD. Abrams told American Banker that “for a new stablecoin, liquidity on day one determines what businesses can actually do with it.”

OUSD reserves are held at BNY, Lead Bank and BlackRock, and Bridge issues the stablecoin. In other words: the stack is already a mix of banks, card networks, fintech rails and a stablecoin issuer, which is exactly the kind of structure high-risk payment teams will want to watch as the market adjusts after the GENIUS Act.