Open Standard has disclosed partner terms for Open USD, or OUSD, showing a payment fee of 0.1 basis points with a hard cap of $0.01 per transaction. According to an internal document sent to partners and cited in the report, the full fee goes to Open Standard, the governance company behind the stablecoin.
Under that structure, a $1 million cross-border payment that would normally cost $10 at 0.1 basis points would still be charged only $0.01. The fee table indicates that any single payment above $1,000 is charged a flat $0.01, which means the effective rate keeps falling as transaction size increases.
$0.01 cap sharply lowers costs on larger payments
The report compares OUSD’s pricing with existing payment rails. Merchant discount rates for card acquiring are commonly in the 1% to 3% range, while foreign exchange spreads and remittance fees in cross-border transfers often run into the tens of basis points. Against that backdrop, charging $0.01 on a large-value OUSD payment pushes the effective rate below 0.0001 basis points.
For platforms handling large volumes of smaller payments, the 0.1 basis point formula works more like a predictable per-transaction charge, staying below one cent per payment. Open Standard’s stated pitch on its website is that businesses should be able to use stablecoins much like fiat, with predictable costs.
Reserve income, not fees, supports the model
The report says the low-fee structure is supported by reserve income rather than transaction fees. That sets OUSD apart from USDT and USDC, whose issuers keep reserve interest. OUSD instead shares that income with partners that help drive adoption, while the issuer retains only the 0.1 basis point management fee or the $0.01 cap.
Open Standard’s own description is blunt: nearly all reserve revenue will be shared with companies that put OUSD to use.
OUSD is issued by Bridge. Its reserves are held with major financial institutions including BlackRock, Lead Bank and BNY Mellon, and reserve attestations are published every month. The stablecoin officially launched on Sept. 30 and now has more than 200 listed partners across financial institutions, fintech firms and enterprises.
Equity earn-in pool sets a $50 million threshold
The same document also lays out an equity incentive structure. Each month, the OUSD platform measures how much stablecoin each partner holds and moves, then uses that data to determine allocations from an annual equity earn-in pool.
To qualify, a partner must meet a threshold of at least $50 million. Even if one partner earns the maximum amount of warrants available, its ownership stake is capped at 5%.
According to the report, that design ties liquidity commitments to equity and helps explain why five founding partners were willing to commit more than $1 billion each in launch liquidity.
Visa releases technical integration materials
At the same time the fee and equity documents surfaced, Visa published more than 100 pages of technical implementation and user guidance for partners integrating OUSD through the Visa Stablecoin Platform, or VSP.
Open Standard’s website lists four access routes for enterprises through Stripe, Bridge, Privy, Mastercard, Coinbase and Visa. Across those routes, 1:1 minting and redemption are free of charge.
OUSD is natively issued on Base, Ethereum, Solana and Tempo. On the exchange side, the initial lineup includes Coinbase, Kraken and Uniswap.
Direct pressure on USDC and USDT revenue-sharing models
The report frames OUSD as a direct challenge to the revenue-sharing structures used by established stablecoins. Circle disclosed USDC’s revenue-sharing ledger for the first time in July, showing $819 million paid out in the first half to partners and transaction costs. The question at the time was how long that model could hold.
OUSD’s answer, as described in the report, is a more aggressive version: send nearly all reserve income outward, then use equity to lock in larger partners.
For Tether, reserve interest has long been a core source of profit. For Circle, distribution advantages built on USDC’s scale could face pressure from a model built on both revenue sharing and equity. The report adds that Asian exchanges and payment companies have long been an important source of stablecoin liquidity. If OUSD’s equity pool and low-fee structure appeal to those firms, USDC could feel pressure first in cross-border settlement and merchant acquiring.
