Open Standard’s announcement of Open USD (OUSD), a consortium-governed stablecoin for global payments and settlement, triggered an immediate market reaction. According to the source material, Circle shares fell nearly 16% intraday to around $63.07 as traders assessed a new competitive threat to USDC.
OUSD was announced on June 30, 2026. The project is being advanced by Open Standard, with Zach Abrams, co-founder and CEO of Stripe-owned Bridge, named as the founding CEO of the entity operating the stablecoin. The group said it has support from more than 140 companies across payments, banking, technology, and crypto.
Free minting model shifts attention to reserve income
Open Standard outlined three core features. Businesses will be able to mint and redeem OUSD at zero cost with no volume caps. Reserve earnings, after a small management fee, will be retained largely by partners. Governance will sit with a board made up of participating institutions rather than a single issuer. That structure puts reserve-yield distribution and governance design at the center of the competition.
The partner list spans several sectors. Payments and fintech participants include Visa, Stripe, Mastercard, American Express, Adyen, Klarna, Affirm, Brex, and Western Union. Banking and finance names include BlackRock, BNY, Standard Chartered, DBS, U.S. Bank, BBVA, and Commonwealth Bank of Australia. Technology and commerce companies include Google, Shopify, IBM, DoorDash, and Rakuten. Crypto-native firms listed in the material include Coinbase, Solana, Ripple, Base, OKX, Bybit, Fireblocks, and Aptos Labs.
Multi-chain launch planned later in 2026
Open Standard expects OUSD to launch later in 2026 across multiple blockchains, including Solana and Aptos. Aptos Labs joined as a launch partner shortly after Aptos reported that its on-chain stablecoin market cap reached a record $2 billion in June 2026.
Comments attributed to executives across partner firms centered on shared governance, lower costs at scale, and open, interoperable infrastructure that is not tied to one issuer’s roadmap. For payments companies, merchants, and financial institutions, that framing points to a different way of distributing the economics of stablecoin reserves.
ARK Invest researcher flags liquidity and governance risks
Not all observers are convinced the model will move quickly. Lorenzo Valente, research director at ARK Invest, questioned whether a consortium of roughly 500 competing entities can execute fast enough to challenge entrenched issuers.
His concerns focus on three areas: cold-start liquidity, the absence of established trading pairs against major crypto assets, and governance friction caused by too many stakeholders. Valente also argued that OUSD’s thin fee structure may leave it with fewer resources for ecosystem incentives, an area that helped Circle scale. Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire responded by describing stablecoins as central to the next phase of internet-based money movement, while maintaining that USDC remains the preferred option for institutions and that Circle will keep expanding through banking and payments partnerships.