140+ Companies Join Open USD Stablecoin Coalition (MC 7/2)

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A coalition of more than 140 companies, including Visa, Stripe, Mastercard, American Express, BlackRock, BNY, and Standard Chartered, is participating in a new dollar stablecoin initiative called Open USD. OUSD is expected to launch later this year and will be operated by Open Standard, a newly formed independent company led by Zach Abrams, with governance through a board made up of Open USD partners.

Open Standard says the project is meant to address business pain points with existing stablecoins: fees to mint and redeem at large volumes, limited access to reserve economics, and dependence on third-party issuer roadmaps. The company says OUSD will have no mint or redemption fees, no artificial volume limits, and reserve economics shared with partners after a management fee.

Stripe says Open USD will be the default stablecoin for businesses running on Stripe.

The Money Code Take

I’m skeptical this spells the end of USDC, and USDT serves a different market altogether. While OUSD attacks real problems, overcoming USDC’s liquidity and infrastructure requires exceptional execution and significant capital. Open Standard has not yet answered the capital question, and the governance model makes the execution challenge harder.

A Question of Capital
OUSD has to overcome what USDC has already built: liquidity, integrations, regulatory work, banking relationships, partner support. This requires investment, but if most reserve yield is shared with partners, the issuer/network may be starved of the funds needed to build distribution. Early on, this is even harder because there are no balances yet, so there is not much yield to share.

Sharing reserve yield is attractive to firms that hold balances. It matters less for partners that mainly facilitate transfers and do not hold large balances at rest. Those firms need other incentives.

A solution might be fundraising from investors and/or some partners but that adds an additional layer of complexity to governance and neutrality.

The Governance Model Cuts Against The Execution Need
Beyond capital, delivering on the network requires best-in-class execution. This means coordinating liquidity, partner commitments, regulatory work, product development, and default routing across companies with different priorities.

This would already be difficult if it was led by a nimble, assertive operating team. But a broad partner-governed structure can create the opposite: slower decision-making, harder commercial tradeoffs, and more coordination friction.

Sparse details have been released, and there could be changes made that enable authority to be more delegated, especially early on. This has tradeoffs for the open/neutral nature of the project, but might be a necessary requirement for success.

Announced Partners Are Not Enough
OUSD is not the first partner-aligned, reserve-sharing stablecoin model. USDG / Global Dollar Network has already pursued a similar direction, with over 100 partners and more than $1B in market cap. That shows the model can get traction, but also that the model alone only gets you so far: USDG remains a fraction of USDC in terms of share of market cap and volume.

That does not mean OUSD fails, but it makes the burden of proof more specific: what does Open Standard plan to do differently, and why does this consortium execute materially better than USDG?

The OUSD partner list is certainly larger and has more leading names, but “supports OUSD” is very different from “actively drives OUSD.” How many partners beyond Stripe make OUSD primary? Can they commit usage in certain circumstances (e.g. between partners)? Who pays for the inconvenience when alternatives have better liquidity?

Bottom Line
OUSD is a serious attempt to solve real stablecoin pain points, but the announcement does not yet show the capital structure or operating model needed to overcome USDC’s liquidity, infrastructure, and institutional position.

Payroll platforms already control the moment workers decide where money lands. That makes the paycheck a powerful wedge for dollar balances, but it also drags stablecoin products into salary timing, local rules, and payment exceptions.

Thierry Edde spent five and a half years building Deel's payment stack across bank accounts, PSPs, local rails, and RFIs that still arrive by email. He explains what Deel learned when contractors started routing pay through every withdrawal method available, and why that behavior pointed toward an embedded dollar wallet.

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Read on for a round up of this week's news:

Wednesday 15 July, New York: Stablecon Salon - Summer Mixer

Monday 27 July, Singapore: Stablecon Roundtable: Can Treasurers Pay and Move Money Better with Digital Assets?

Wednesday 12 August, New York: Stablecon Salon - August Mixer

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