On September 30, 2026, Open USD (OUSD) officially launched across four chains: Ethereum, Solana, Base, and Tempo. This is not just a single new digital dollar. It is the result of an alliance of five major companies, and its economic model is designed to compete with USDT and USDC using a tool that the two leading digital dollars do not employ.

The stablecoin will be issued by Bridge, the stablecoin infrastructure firm that Stripe acquired in 2024 for $1.1 billion. Reserves are held at BlackRock, Lead Bank, and BNY, and Bridge will publish monthly reserve attestations. Each stablecoin will be backed and pegged 1:1 by the US dollar.

Five entities commit over $1 billion in liquidity

Coinbase, Mastercard, Shopify, Stripe, and Visa are the five founding partners and investors, each receiving an equal initial equity stake. All five committed over $1 billion to establish OUSD liquidity in the coming months. The specific amount and equity percentage for each party have not been disclosed.

Businesses can begin using OUSD via Mastercard, Stripe, and the Visa Stablecoin Platform immediately, with Coinbase starting on October 1. Initial trading is taking place on Coinbase, Kraken, and Uniswap.

The partner network has grown from over 140 companies when the project was announced in June 2026 to over 200 companies, including American Express, UBS, Shopify, and Western Union. Notable new partners include Japan’s SBI Holdings, Jeeves, and Ramp.

The model differs in who gets paid

Stablecoin issuers earn interest from the cash and securities backing the token. But Open Standard will not keep that interest for itself like Tether, nor will it share a portion of reserve revenue with distribution partners like Circle.

According to CEO Zach Abrams, founding partners do not receive special revenue sharing. Instead, they earn rewards based on the volume of OUSD they generate, under the same framework as all other partners. Furthermore, the majority of company equity will be distributed gradually over the next 4 to 5 years to founders and network partners, calculated on a combination of OUSD supply and transaction activity. The minimum threshold for partners to qualify for equity has not been disclosed.

Abrams put it bluntly: “Every other stablecoin is building an investment fund. We are building money.” He previously co-founded and led Bridge before the Stripe acquisition.

The practical implication is that this model turns integrating OUSD into payment rails into a directly profitable action for those doing so. With Tether, the benefit lies in customers having held the token. With OUSD, the benefit lies in whoever moves it.

Commercial terms

Stripe positions OUSD for high-volume enterprise transactions such as earned-wage access and payroll payouts, arguing that variable fees for entering and exiting dollars in other stablecoins make them expensive to use. Open Standard charges a small transaction fee instead. OUSD is also available in Stripe Treasury for businesses to hold balances, and to send to crypto wallets across more than 100 countries.

Additionally, an Aave V4 proposal from Sentora has listed OUSD as a borrowable asset alongside RLUSD and PYUSD. This helps OUSD carve out a presence in the stablecoin market, where over $300 billion is still dominated by USDT and USDC, with approximately 143 billion USDT and about 74 billion USDC. 2026 is the year major financial institutions converge on stablecoins: Qivalis, backed by 37 European banks, is issuing a digital euro, and 21 financial institutions including Bank of America, Citi, Goldman Sachs, and UBS are establishing their own issuer.

An unanswered question is whether the contribution-based equity distribution model will withstand real-world testing. When announced in June 2026, the news sent Circle shares down as the market feared major USDC partners were pivoting toward a competing digital dollar. The question at the time was whether a structure of over 200 companies, including competitors, could make decisions effectively. Abrams rejected the “joint venture” label, stating that executive management runs the company, not a committee.

What answers that question will not be announcements, but actual liquidity over the coming months.