Visa Supports Open USD but Remains Neutral in Stablecoin Competition

Visa says it won’t pick a stablecoin winner — even as Open USD (OUSD) prepares to challenge USDT and USDC Visa CEO Ryan McInerney used the company’s July 28 fiscal Q3 earnings call to lay out a simple message for the stablecoin wars: Visa will stay “multi-coin, multi-chain” and won’t “pick winners.” That neutrality matters because Visa is one of more than 140 firms backing Open Standard, the consortium building Open USD — a new, partner-governed stablecoin that aims to compete with market leaders Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC. What Visa is doing (and not doing) - Visa is supporting Open Standard but not committing exclusively to OUSD. McInerney framed Visa’s role as helping clients connect securely to whatever stablecoins, networks and infrastructure gain adoption. - The company already settles, issues cards and moves money for multiple stablecoins and blockchains, and earlier described its approach as a “multi-coin and multi-chain foundation.” - On July 16 Visa launched a Visa Stablecoin Platform aimed at banks, fintechs and crypto firms. The platform provides minting, burning, storage and transfers for Open USD through a Visa-managed environment and will connect to Visa’s stablecoin settlement, linked-card and money-movement services. - Visa reported stablecoin settlement activity at an annualized run rate of roughly $7 billion as of March 2026 — underscoring practical, ongoing exposure to the sector. How Open USD differs from USDT and USDC - Open Standard plans to let businesses mint and redeem OUSD with no fees or volume limits, and says most reserve income will flow back to participants that adopt and distribute the token. - Unlike issuer-controlled models used by USDT and USDC — where the company that issues the token controls reserve management and economics — OUSD is planned to have an independent management team and partner-led governance. - These features are planned; OUSD has not launched, so there’s no on-chain activity, circulating supply or market cap to compare yet. Open questions and market reaction - Despite the consortium’s big-name backers (Mastercard, Stripe, Coinbase, BlackRock, BNY, Google and many global banks among them), Visa’s comments suggest partner support may look more like soft commitments than exclusive bets. ARK Invest researcher Lorenzo Valente described it as “closer to a soft LOI than a strategic bet” — an analyst interpretation, not a disclosed contractual term. - Open Standard has not published binding commitments about capital, distribution or balance-sheet support from partners, leaving open how much real firepower OUSD will receive at launch. - OUSD’s announcement also stirred market anxiety around Circle’s reserve-income model; Circle shares dropped about 17.5% on June 30, though Russell index removals that day also weighed on the stock and complicate attribution. The real test ahead - Visa has already created a pathway for OUSD distribution via its stablecoin platform, but McInerney’s insistence on neutrality signals that OUSD won’t be Visa’s sole stablecoin play. - Adoption will hinge on concrete factors that only become clear after launch: reserve arrangements and income mechanics, regulatory compliance, partner integrations into real payment and settlement flows, and actual customer demand — not just the size of the consortium backing it. Bottom line: Open USD has heavyweight institutional backing and a different governance model that could shift parts of the stablecoin landscape. But with OUSD still pre-launch and Visa committed to a multi-token approach, its impact will be determined by practical integrations, regulatory outcomes and whether participants put real balance-sheet and distribution muscle behind the token.