Open USD Launches with 140+ Partners, Challenges Stablecoin Revenue Model

On June 30, 2026, an interesting news story emerged in the U.S. stablecoin market.

Open Standard has announced the launch of a new USD-backed stablecoin, Open USD (OUSD). The announcement includes a prestigious list of participants, with over 140 companies such as Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, American Express, BlackRock, BNY, Google, Shopify, Coinbase, Solana, and Ripple.

Simply launching another dollar-stablecoin isn’t something to get overly excited about. The stablecoin market never lacks new names—it’s liquidity, use cases, regulatory trust, and sustained operational capability that are truly scarce.

But OUSD is different. What’s truly interesting about it isn’t that it issued another coin—it’s that it brought to light a problem in the stablecoin industry that was previously unspoken:

Who should receive the profits generated by stablecoin reserve assets?

This is also why I think OUSD is worth writing about.

Over the past few years, stablecoin issuers have held users' deposited U.S. dollars or equivalent assets as reserves, with the interest generated from these reserves primarily benefiting the issuers and a small number of core distribution partners. Payment companies, exchanges, wallets, merchant platforms, and developers have helped integrate stablecoins into real-world use cases, but they often do not receive adequate economic returns.

OUSD wants to change this allocation logic.

Image source: Official announcement on the Open Standard website regarding Open USD

In simple terms, it’s like a cooperative in the stablecoin world: instead of one issuer taking most of the profits, it brings together payment networks, financial institutions, technology platforms, and crypto access points to jointly promote, govern, and share the rewards.

According to the official announcement from Open Standard, OUSD is designed with three main features.

First, there are no fees for enterprises to mint or redeem OUSD, and there are no artificially imposed size limits. This directly reduces usage costs for institutional users conducting large or high-frequency transactions.

Second, the income generated by OUSD’s reserve assets, after deducting a small management fee, will be distributed to partners. Note that this does not mean ordinary token holders receive interest directly; rather, it returns the economic benefits of the stablecoin network to ecosystem participants.

Third, OUSD will be operated by Open Standard, an independent company, with a board of partners involved in governance. In other words, it aims to avoid a model where a single issuer has full control over the stablecoin’s roadmap, yield model, and governance structure.

Together, these three points are where OUSD truly challenges the existing market.

Stablecoins appear to be payment tools, but at their core, they are a financial infrastructure business. When users hold one stablecoin, the issuing system holds one U.S. dollar in reserve. If these reserve assets are invested in cash, short-term U.S. Treasuries, or money market instruments, they generate interest. In a high-interest-rate environment, this represents a substantial source of income.

In the past, this income primarily went to the issuers. OUSD’s logic is that since stablecoins rely on payment companies, merchant platforms, banks, exchanges, wallets, and developers to grow, these channel partners shouldn’t just be working for free.

This is not a minor adjustment. It directly targets the core of the stablecoin industry.

After the OUSD announcement, Circle's stock came under pressure. The market reaction was straightforward: if payment giants, banks, tech platforms, and crypto infrastructure companies begin jointly promoting a new USD stablecoin, USDC's growth story is no longer as compelling.

But Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire responded with restraint, welcoming competition while emphasizing that USDC’s network effects, regulatory access, liquidity, and years of ecosystem development cannot be replicated by a mere list of prestigious names.

I don't think this response is just lip service.

What Circle really means is: stablecoins are not a product launch business, but a network business.

USDC didn’t become what it is overnight. It has exchange depth, on-chain integrations, institutional clients, regulatory disclosures, redemption capabilities, and a developer ecosystem. The more people use a stablecoin, the deeper its liquidity; the deeper the liquidity, the more people continue to use it. This network effect cannot be replaced overnight by 140 logos.

But the threat posed by Open USD is real.

It’s not a small company issuing a token; rather, it has brought together the downstream entry points for stablecoins. Behind names like Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, Shopify, Coinbase, BlackRock, and BNY lie capabilities in payment clearing, merchant acquiring, consumer use cases, crypto trading, asset management, and custody.

In the past, issuers sought distribution channels to sell stablecoins. Open USD aims to have distribution partners jointly define the stablecoin.

This is why Circle is being revalued by the market.

Circle's rebuttal consists of roughly two layers.

The first layer is network effects. USDC has built years of market trust and real-world use cases. What OUSD truly needs to prove is not whether big companies endorse it, but whether these companies will bring in actual capital flows, merchant traffic, and transaction use cases.

The second layer is the revenue-sharing logic. Allaire’s point is that Circle would also distribute a significant portion of its revenue to distribution partners while retaining enough to continue investing in infrastructure. In other words, “revenue sharing” is not unique to OUSD—the key lies in how it’s distributed, to whom, and whether this model can sustain long-term development.

This judgment makes sense.

But the market isn’t worried that OUSD will replace USDC tomorrow—it’s worried that the trend has shifted. In the future, banks, payment companies, fintech platforms, and merchant networks could all enter the stablecoin issuance or distribution ecosystem. As soon as people start asking, “Why should I bring you users and transactions if I can’t share in more of the profits?” Circle’s business model will face ongoing scrutiny.

This is the core of the second half of the stablecoin competition.

In the first half, everyone asked: Who is more transparent? Who is more compliant? Whose reserves are more trustworthy?

In the second half, people will ask: Who controls the channels? Who owns the scenarios? Who gets the revenue?

Federated stablecoins are not a new phenomenon.

The most prominent example is Libra, later renamed Diem. In 2019, Facebook led a prestigious consortium aiming to launch a global stablecoin. Its lineup of participants that year was equally impressive, and it similarly sought to integrate payments, technology, finance, and internet platforms into a single system.

The outcome is well known: the project faced global regulatory crackdowns, partners gradually withdrew, governance and compliance pressures mounted, and ultimately, the assets were sold without ever being officially launched to the public.

OUSD is certainly not Diem. The regulatory environment and market maturity today are different. The U.S. GENIUS Act was signed into law on July 18, 2025, establishing for the first time a federal regulatory framework for payment stablecoins; although key obligations will be implemented gradually through subsequent rulemaking, the regulatory boundaries around issuer eligibility, reserve arrangements, anti-money laundering, and sanctions compliance are now far clearer than they were during the Libra/Diem era.

Image source: White House statement on the signing of the GENIUS Act into law

But the old problems with alliance projects won't disappear automatically.

How is liquidity initially launched? How do partners make decisions? Who is the reserve custodian? Are redemption arrangements sufficiently stable? Who is responsible for KYC, AML, sanctions screening, and freezing mechanisms? If interest rates decline in the future and reserve yields shrink, can free minting and redeeming, as well as partner profit-sharing, still be sustained?

These are the real challenges that test OUSD.

Therefore, my stance on OUSD is: I value its model disruption, but I don't prepay its success.

It raises a good question, but a good question doesn't equal a good answer.

This matter offers three practical insights for Asian-based crypto payment, cross-border settlement, outbound e-commerce, and Web3 companies.

First, the era of multiple stablecoins is arriving, and selecting a stablecoin will become a compliance issue.

Previously, businesses choosing stablecoins for payments primarily selected between USDT and USDC. In the future, as OUSD, bank-issued stablecoins, and payment institution stablecoins continue to emerge, businesses may face increased demands for integrating additional coin options.

However, integrating a new stablecoin is not simply adding another payment option. Companies must evaluate the issuer, reserve assets, redemption terms, freeze mechanisms, on-chain deployment, custody structure, sanctions compliance, and user terms. Choosing a stablecoin is not just a business decision—it requires involvement from legal, financial, compliance, and risk management teams.

Second, compliance is shifting from a moat to a prerequisite for entry.

Previously, USDC’s key advantage over USDT was its greater transparency, regulatory compliance, and easier acceptance by institutions. However, as the U.S. stablecoin regulatory framework becomes clearer, more banks, payment companies, and fintech firms will enter the market within the established rules. In the future, leading players will all prioritize compliance—compliance will no longer be a differentiating advantage for a few, but rather a prerequisite for entry.

Third, the Asian market won't be rewritten in the short term, but enterprise settlement scenarios are worth monitoring.

USDT's liquidity position in the Asian OTC market and high-frequency trading scenarios will not be undermined by OUSD's尚未上线. OUSD is not targeted at retail users, but rather at enterprise-level fund transfers, merchant payments, cross-border payments, and platform settlements.

If platforms like Stripe, Shopify, Western Union, and Coinbase integrate OUSD into their default settlement pathways, the first to feel the change may not be retail crypto investors, but rather businesses engaged in cross-border payments, overseas SaaS, international trade, and crypto payments.

Open USD may not become a killer of USDC, nor will it necessarily disrupt USDT's global liquidity.

But it has raised a sharp enough question: Who should share in the economic benefits generated by stablecoins?

If a stablecoin is merely the issuer's product and the reserve earnings primarily go to the issuer, it makes logical sense.

But if stablecoins are becoming the underlying infrastructure of payment networks, then payment companies, merchant platforms, banks, exchanges, wallets, and developers will all demand a seat at the table.

Circle welcomes competition because it believes in the network effects and regulatory accumulation of USDC. Open USD emphasizes open governance and shared profits because it recognizes the imbalance of interests among intermediaries in existing stablecoin models.

This competition will not be decided by announcements or by 140 logos. It will be decided by real capital flows, real trading volumes, real redemption pressures, and real regulatory scrutiny.

But regardless of whether Open USD ultimately succeeds, it has already rewritten the way the stablecoin industry asks questions.

Any issuer wishing to exclusively claim reserve earnings must first answer this question from the channel partner:

Why?

Original author: Shao Jiaodian