Visa- and Mastercard-Backed Stablecoin Plans Equity for Partners
Open Standard, whose investors include Visa, Mastercard and Coinbase, plans to distribute company equity to business partners that help grow its stablecoin, OUSD.
The model, which Open Standard CEO Zach Abrams described to CoinDesk, aims to encourage the dollar-pegged cryptocurrency to be used for payments and other transactions, not just held. Open USD (OUSD) is available on the Ethereum, Solana, Base and Tempo networks.
Five founding partners pledge more than $1 billion
Coinbase, Mastercard, Shopify, Stripe and Visa received equal initial stakes as the company’s first five founding investors. The five companies pledged a total of more than $1 billion in capital to build OUSD liquidity over the coming months. The amount invested by each company and the size of its stake were not disclosed.
The broader network of partners aiming to integrate OUSD into their services has grown to more than 200 companies. Abrams expects the number of founding investors to rise to 10–12 companies over time.
Both supply and usage will be measured in equity distribution
Open Standard aims to distribute most of its company equity over the next 4–5 years to founding and other network partners that contribute to OUSD’s growth. Both the amount of OUSD they supply and their transaction activity will be taken into account when determining equity for partners that meet a certain minimum threshold. That threshold has not yet been disclosed.
For supply-based rewards, a separate part of the model, founding partners will be subject to the same framework as other partners; they will not receive a special share of revenue simply because they are founders. This means the initial investor stakes, rewards for supplying OUSD, and equity distribution tied to future contributions will operate through separate channels.
The goal is to bring the stablecoin into payment flows
OUSD’s targeted use cases include banking, cross-border payments, settlement of card transactions, institutional trading and lending. Partners will be able to contribute to the network by holding the token on their balance sheets, providing market-making services or using it for payment transactions.
Dan Romero, Tempo’s head of business development, said fees for minting and burning OUSD would also be eliminated. The move aims to reduce costs for companies that convert large amounts into stablecoins and then issue them again.