Visa, Mastercard and Coinbase launch stablecoin network for businesses

Visa, Mastercard and Coinbase joined more than 140 businesses behind Open Standard, a new stablecoin network that will issue Open USD, a dollar-pegged token aimed at business payments at scale. The launch lands as the industry tries to move stablecoins from trading venues and niche transfers into ordinary commercial rails.

Open Standard’s pitch is straightforward: let companies mint and redeem Open USD without fees or volume limits, then share reserve earnings among partners after a management fee. That design tackles one of the biggest adoption hurdles for businesses, which is not whether a token can move, but whether it can move through accounting systems, treasury operations and supplier payments without adding friction or cost. Zach Abrams, co-founder of Bridge, will serve as founding chief executive, putting a payments infrastructure executive at the center of a project that is trying to look less like a crypto experiment and more like enterprise plumbing.

The launch also carries a competitive message. By bringing together card networks, a crypto exchange and other large firms, Open Standard is signaling that mainstream payment companies want a hand in defining the next phase of tokenized settlement before smaller crypto-native players set the terms. The reported backers include firms such as BNY, Stripe, BlackRock, Standard Chartered, Ripple, Google and Shopify, suggesting a coalition that stretches from banking and asset management to software and commerce.

Still, the structure does not solve every barrier. Fee-free minting and redemption can help with liquidity and treasury management, but merchant trust will depend on whether Open USD is easy to accept, easy to reconcile and easy to cash out under real-world conditions. Interoperability remains another test, especially if businesses want the token to work across multiple payment systems rather than only within one consortium’s network. Regulation is another pressure point. The GENIUS Act, signed into law on July 18, 2025, created a federal framework for payment stablecoins, but oversight of reserves, redemption rights and operating standards will continue to shape how far products like Open USD can go.

The timing underscores how large the market has become. Third-party trackers put stablecoin capitalization around $320 billion in 2026, and Circle’s IPO pricing at $31 a share on June 4, 2025, showed how far the sector has already moved into the mainstream. Open Standard is trying to capture that momentum, but the harder question is whether business adoption follows the launch or whether the launch mainly confirms that stablecoin infrastructure is now a battleground for the biggest names in payments.