Visa, Mastercard, and Stripe Back New Stablecoin, Challenging Tether, USDC, and RLUSD

A new stablecoin, Open USD (OUSD), has launched with significant backing from major payment companies. On September 30, 2026, Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, Coinbase, and Shopify committed $1 billion to the new stablecoin, which is designed to maintain a value of $1.

OUSD stands out from other stablecoins, such as Tether's USDT and USD Coin (USDC), in that it shares reserve interest income with its partner companies. This is in contrast to Tether and Circle, which keep most of the interest income from their reserves.

The CEO of Open Standard, Zach Abrams, said, 'Every other stablecoin is building a fund. We're building money.'

While OUSD is significantly smaller than established players, with a market cap of around $1 billion, it has already seen strong initial interest. Tempo, one of the blockchains supporting it, noted that OUSD trading liquidity exceeded $400 million on its first day.

USDC faces the biggest threat from Open USD, as Circle already splits reserve income with its distributors, and Coinbase, an OUSD partner, can promote whichever token offers them more profit. Visa's involvement also adds pressure, as the company has been working on settlement programs using USDC, while now supporting a rival that shares its revenue.

Ripple's RLUSD also faces a different set of challenges, as Ripple sells RLUSD to banks and payment institutions for cross-border transactions, just the type of customers that OUSD's partners are already accommodating.