A consortium of the world's biggest financial names

The partner list spans payment networks, banks, technology companies and crypto firms. On the payments side: Visa, Mastercard and American Express. From the financial sector: BlackRock, BNY, Standard Chartered, DBS and U.S. Bank. Technology is represented by Google, Shopify, Samsung Electronics and IBM. Western Union and MoneyGram bring remittance scale. Klarna and Checkout.com represent fintech, while Coinbase, Ripple, Fireblocks, Aave and Stellar are among the crypto participants.

In total, more than 140 companies are part of the consortium — a breadth with no precedent in previous attempts to build shared stablecoin infrastructure. Open USD is expected to go live during 2026, with no specific date disclosed by Open Standard.

The business model that challenges the incumbents

Open Standard presents Open USD around three core principles. Companies can issue and redeem the token free of charge and without volume limits — which Open Standard describes as a direct response to the barriers businesses face today.

Reserve earnings — the interest generated on the assets backing the token — are distributed to partners, minus a management fee. This is precisely the yield that Tether and Circle currently retain for themselves; for the two market leaders, it amounts to billions of dollars annually.

Governance follows the same logic: Open Standard is run by a board composed of the partner companies, not a single controlling entity. Zach Abrams, co-founder of payment infrastructure company Bridge — acquired by Stripe — has been appointed chief executive.

The consortium model is not new — but the scale is

Open USD launches in the wake of the GENIUS Act, signed into law by President Donald Trump in 2025 — the first federal legislation establishing rules for stablecoins. The law was seen as paving the way for digital tokens to become a more everyday means of payment. For now, stablecoins are still used primarily for trading other cryptocurrencies rather than for ordinary payments and transfers.

In Europe, a parallel effort is underway: 37 banks from 15 countries — including Nordea, Danske Bank, SEB and Santander — are working through the Qivalis consortium to develop a MiCA-compatible euro stablecoin, with a planned launch in the second half of 2026, according to Kaupr. The two consortium movements on either side of the Atlantic point to the same conclusion: that established financial institutions are now taking an active role in shaping stablecoin infrastructure, rather than leaving it to crypto companies alone.

"Existing stablecoins have great strengths, but to use them at scale, businesses need something that's open, low-cost, high-throughput, broadly accessible, and aligned to their interests," says Zach Abrams, CEO of Open Standard. With the financial world's heaviest hitters aligned on one side, the question is no longer whether stablecoins will enter the mainstream payments market — but who will control them when they do.