Open USD: why 140 companies are building a stablecoin

Around 140 companies, including Mastercard, Stripe, BlackRock, Coinbase and Brazilian players Itaú and Bradesco, joined forces to create a stablecoin: Open USD (OUSD).

Open USD is a dollar-backed stablecoin operated by an independent company called Open Standard.

"Existing stablecoins have great strengths, but to use them at scale, companies need something open, low-cost, high-throughput, widely accessible and aligned with their interests," said Zach Abrams, CEO and founder of Open Standard.

According to the official announcement, the launch is expected later this year.

What Open USD is

The announcement left many important questions unanswered. While much is being speculated, here is what is confirmed.

Open USD is the stablecoin. Open Standard is the operating and governance layer.

The proposal: no minting or redemption fees for businesses, no artificial volume caps, collaborative governance and a model designed to return most reserve-generated revenue to participating companies after a management fee. That economic model differs materially from how major stablecoins currently operate.

Open Standard has positioned the project as "a shared stablecoin for global financial activity," operating as an independent and neutral company with alignment of interest across the collective. Governance will be collaborative, handled by Open Standard's own management team and a board made up of partners.

Taken together, the confirmed picture is that Open USD is simultaneously a stablecoin, a consortium-style operating model and a distribution alliance.

Still, updates are expected on what has not yet been confirmed: the legal issuer, the reserve manager, the lead custodian, the precise governance mechanics, the detailed economics formula and the chain-by-chain rollout.

Why Open USD matters

Open Standard is explicitly trying to solve not only settlement speed, but also the political economy of stablecoin adoption.

The project is designed to directly attack one of the most important but least discussed dynamics in the stablecoin market: reserve income. Circle and Tether both earn substantial economics from retaining the interest earned on the assets backing USDC and USDT. Open USD, by contrast, would invert that model by distributing that yield to partners rather than keeping it for the issuer.

Even with many details still unconfirmed, the consortium being made up of the largest players in the financial sector sends a clear signal: stablecoins are moving from crypto-native settlement into mainstream payment infrastructure.

What this means for your product

As new stablecoin infrastructure emerges, companies still need the payment rails to put it to work. Unblock connects stablecoins to local payment systems across Latin America, the United States and Europe through a single API.