Stripe has officially launched OUSD, a stablecoin developed under its initiative, signaling a fundamental shift in the stablecoin market's competitive dynamics — from asset-centric differentiation to network and ecosystem rivalry.
OUSD is issued by Open Standard and backed by an impressive coalition of partners including Visa, Mastercard, and Google. The stablecoin adopts a shared governance and yield model, allowing participants to collectively manage the protocol and capture on-chain rewards. More importantly, Stripe has set OUSD as the default stablecoin across its platform, embedding native support for OUSD within Stripe's vast merchant and user network.
This move is widely seen as a direct challenge to Circle, the issuer of USDC. Unlike USDC's centralized reserve model, OUSD emphasizes decentralized governance and multi-party oversight, aiming to attract broader ecosystem participation through a more open network structure. Leveraging its global payment infrastructure, Stripe intends to reshape the underlying architecture of cross-border money movement via OUSD.
