As more institutions adopt stablecoins, competition is increasingly shifting from issuing tokens to determining who controls the underlying infrastructure and network.
Unlike most existing stablecoins, Open USD will allow companies to mint and redeem tokens without fees while returning reserve revenue to participating partners, minus a management fee. Governance will also be shared among members rather than controlled by a single issuer.
The model points to one of the core economies of the current stablecoin market. Issuers like Circle earn income by investing reserves backing their tokens in short-term U.S. Treasuries and retaining most of the interest generated by those assets. Instead, Open USD plans to distribute that return to participating companies.
The approach resembles the Global Dollar Network (USDG), a stablecoin consortium led by Paxos that shares reserve revenue with participating companies. That network is backed by companies like Robinhood, Kraken and Galaxy Digital, and was designed to encourage broader adoption by aligning incentives between the issuer and distribution partners.
In Europe, a group of banks and payment providers launched Qivalis, a company to develop a euro-denominated stablecoin as financial institutions look to build a shared digital payments infrastructure.
The breadth of Open USD support reflects that shift. In addition to Stripe, Coinbase, Mastercard and Visa, launch partners include BNY, Standard Chartered, DBS, US Bank, Shopify, Google, IBM, Mercado Pago, Fireblocks, Anchorage Digital, MetaMask, Aave, Solana, Polygon and Ripple.
