Visa holds a seat on Open Standard’s board, the company behind Open USD, a stablecoin that returns nearly all reserve earnings to its partners. Despite CEO Ryan McInerney's recent claim that Visa won’t choose a stablecoin champion, the company is clearly betting on Open USD as the first token integrated into its new institutional stablecoin platform.
Open USD launched in June and includes big industry names like Mastercard, American Express, Stripe, BlackRock, Google, Shopify, Coinbase, and Ripple among its 140-plus members. This governance model distributes revenue based on adoption, contrasting with the traditional frameworks of USDT and USDC, which keep reserve interest internally. Visa benefits here with three roles board governance, economic stake, and control over distribution via its Visa Stablecoin Platform (VSP), currently in beta with select clients and focused initially on Open USD.
Visa’s VSP offers a full environment with on-chain wallets, bank connectivity, and institutional controls like passkeys and dual approvals. While Visa supports multiple stablecoins like USDC and PYUSD on its settlement network, the first wave on its own platform is Open USD, signaling a strategic move into a more collaborative and revenue-sharing model in stablecoins. The market reacted sharply; Circle’s shares dropped up to 17% following the announcement even as Coinbase continues to generate significant revenue from USDC.
This material is for informational purposes and does not constitute financial advice.
