In brief
- Open USD (OUSD), a dollar stablecoin issued by Stripe-owned Bridge for Open Standard, went live on Sept. 30 on Ethereum, Solana, Base and Tempo.
- Businesses on Stripe can now mint and redeem it at no cost, and Stripe says it wants OUSD to become its default stablecoin.
- Partners get nearly all reserve income and can earn equity, a direct challenge to the USDT and USDC model.
Open USD, the dollar stablecoin backed by Coinbase, Mastercard, Shopify, Stripe and Visa, went live on Sept. 30. On the same day Stripe said businesses running on Stripe can now use it, and that they can convert between dollars and OUSD at no cost.
Who issues it and how the money flows
OUSD is run by Open Standard, an independent company. The token itself is issued by Bridge, the stablecoin firm Stripe owns, with reserves held at BlackRock, Lead Bank and BNY, according to Open Standard’s launch post. Bridge will publish reserve attestations every month.
The revenue model is the main difference. When it first unveiled the token in June, Open Standard said partners would receive all of the earnings from OUSD’s reserves, minus a small management fee to cover running costs. Partners earn rewards in proportion to the supply and activity they drive, and can also earn equity in the company. The five founding partners are investing in Open Standard and putting up more than $1 billion in launch liquidity. Zach Abrams, who founded Bridge, is now Open Standard’s full-time CEO.
That is where OUSD parts ways with the two market leaders. Tether keeps much of the interest earned on the assets behind USDT, while Circle shares part of its USDC reserve income with distributors such as Coinbase, CoinDesk reports. USDT has about $143 billion in circulation and USDC about $74 billion, in a stablecoin market worth more than $300 billion. “Every other stablecoin is building a fund. We’re building money,” Abrams told CoinDesk.
What “default” on Stripe means for businesses
For now, OUSD sits next to the stablecoins Stripe already supports rather than replacing them. The ambition is bigger. In June, Stripe president Will Gaybrick said Open USD “will be the default stablecoin for businesses running on Stripe”, and he repeated the aim when the founding partners were named.
Stripe’s pitch is about cost. Cross-border businesses such as remittance firms and payroll platforms pay variable fees to mint and burn existing stablecoins, it says, while Open Standard charges a small, fixed transaction fee instead. Developers can build with OUSD through Bridge, Privy embedded wallets and stablecoin cards on Stripe Issuing. Businesses can hold OUSD in Stripe Treasury and send it to crypto wallets in more than 100 countries. Ramp, for example, will use Stripe to let its customers hold OUSD and earn rewards.
Stripe is not the only route in. BVNK and the Visa Stablecoin Platform offer OUSD integrations today, with Coinbase following on Oct. 1. Big banks are building their own tokens too, as HSBC’s RedCoin stablecoin plan shows.
Next to watch: the first monthly reserve attestation from Bridge, and whether Stripe follows through on making OUSD its default.
