Open USD stablecoin draws 140 partners including Ripple and BlackRock

More than 140 companies from payments, banking and crypto agreed to back a single stablecoin — a consortium that includes Ripple alongside Mastercard and BlackRock.

More than 140 financial and technology firms, including Ripple, Mastercard, BlackRock and Google, have joined Open Standard to launch Open USD, a collectively governed stablecoin that charges no minting or redemption fees and distributes reserve income back to its partners.

"Existing stablecoins have great strengths, but to use them at scale, businesses need something that's open, low-cost, high-throughput, broadly accessible, and aligned to their interests," Zach Abrams, interim chief executive officer of Open Standard and co-founder of Bridge, which Stripe acquired in 2024, said.

Open USD will send nearly all of the interest earned on U.S. Treasury reserves back to participating companies rather than retaining it as issuer profit — a direct challenge to the economics of incumbent stablecoins. The token goes live later in 2026 across Solana, Stellar, Base and Polygon, among other chains.

The consortium approach revives elements of Libra, Meta's abandoned 2019 stablecoin project, but arrives in a more mature regulatory environment. The U.S. GENIUS Act has already addressed several critical dimensions of stablecoin oversight, though many operational standards remain unresolved. With the stablecoin market exceeding $300 billion and Citi projecting growth to $4 trillion by 2030, the battle is shifting from who issues tokens to who controls the underlying infrastructure.

Beyond Stripe, Coinbase, Mastercard and Visa, launch partners include BNY Mellon, Standard Chartered, DBS, U.S. Bank, Shopify, Google, IBM, Mercado Pago, Fireblocks, Anchorage Digital, MetaMask, Aave, Solana, Polygon and Ripple. The breadth of backing reflects a growing recognition among financial institutions that no single issuer should dominate the infrastructure layer.

For Ripple, the inclusion signals its push to expand beyond cross-border payments into the broader stablecoin ecosystem. The company has long advocated for blockchain-based payment rails and now joins a consortium that could define the next generation of digital dollar infrastructure.

Circle's USDC, with a market capitalization of roughly $73 billion, has positioned itself as the regulated stablecoin for institutions. Tether's USDT, at about $145 billion, dominates crypto trading and emerging-market payments. Open USD takes aim at a different part of the market — offering banks, payment companies and fintechs a share of the interest income that has become central to the issuer business model.

Jeremy Allaire, CEO of Circle, welcomed the competition. "Stablecoins represent one of the largest market opportunities in the world as the internet transforms the infrastructure for storing and moving money," he said in a post on X. "We welcome continued innovation and competition."

The success of Open Standard will depend on its ability to coordinate governance among more than 140 competing firms — a challenge that has defeated similar efforts before. Dee Hock, founder of Visa, was the only one who successfully designed such an alliance of frenemies, and the Open Standard team will need similar discipline to keep partners aligned on standards, rules and execution.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.