Open USD (OUSD), the stablecoin project backed by Mastercard, Visa and Stripe, went live on Wednesday on Ethereum, Solana, Base and Tempo, entering a market worth more than $300 billion and still dominated by Tether's USDT and Circle's USDC. CEO Zach Abrams said the "overwhelming majority" of Open Standard's equity will be distributed over time to partners based on how much they help grow the token's supply and transaction activity.

Coinbase, Mastercard, Shopify, Stripe and Visa are Open Standard's first five founding partners and investors, each holding an equal initial equity stake. The size of each firm's investment was not disclosed. Abrams said the five companies are currently Open Standard's only investors, and he expects the founding group to eventually expand to roughly 10 to 12 firms, with a board of directors composed of founders.

The broader partner network has grown from more than 140 companies at the June unveiling to over 200, Abrams added, with UBS, Japan's SBI Holdings and fintech Jeeves among the latest additions. The initial cohort announced in June included BlackRock, BNY and Standard Chartered.

What does the equity-for-usage model change?

Stablecoin issuers earn interest on the cash and securities backing their tokens. Tether retains most of that income, while Circle shares a portion of USDC reserve revenue with distribution partners such as Coinbase. Open Standard is making that alignment central rather than incidental.

Founding partners will not receive a special revenue share, Abrams said. They will earn rewards based on the amount of OUSD supply they generate, under the same framework as other partners. Much of Open Standard's equity is intended to be distributed over the next 4-5 years to founders and network partners based on their contributions to growth.

"The overwhelming majority of our cap table is going to be distributed back to founders and non-founders based on how they help grow the network," Abrams said.

Supply alone will not be the measure. Partners that meet a minimum threshold — which the firm did not disclose — can earn equity based on a combination of OUSD supply and transaction activity, incentivizing circulation over passive holding. "Each of these folks [is] going to lean in and hold OUSD on their balance sheet, or hold OUSD onchain, or help market-make, or, in whatever use case makes the most sense for them," Abrams said.

How does Open Standard answer the consortium critique?

When the project emerged in June, some analysts questioned whether a consortium-like structure involving more than 140 companies — some of them direct competitors — could make decisions effectively. The announcement rattled competitor Circle.

Abrams rejects the consortium label. Open Standard has corporate investors, he said, but its management runs the company rather than a committee of hundreds. A smaller founding group holds the ownership and governance role, while the wider network is aligned through rewards tied to contributions.

"We want to be the most useful stablecoin, the same way the U.S. dollar is useful," Abrams said. "Every other stablecoin is building a fund. We're building money." He added: "When are stablecoins successful? It's when they recede into the background and just become a core part of your mom's bank account."

Can OUSD compete with USDT's $143 billion and USDC's $74 billion?

Abrams, who previously co-founded and led stablecoin infrastructure firm Bridge — acquired by Stripe for $1.1 billion in 2024 — frames the opportunity as larger than taking share from the incumbents. He pointed to card settlement, foreign exchange and cross-border payments as areas where stablecoins could move money faster and more frequently than traditional banking rails. Open USD is designed for banking, cross-border payments, card settlement, institutional trading and lending.

Open USD will also eliminate minting and burning fees, a meaningful saving for companies moving large sums in and out of stablecoins, Dan Romero, chief business officer at Tempo, told CoinDesk. Romero said he sees a path to roughly $1 billion of OUSD on Tempo within the next few months, rising above $10 billion during 2027 and potentially exceeding $100 billion over several years. Tempo intends to compete to become OUSD's deepest liquidity pool across the multiple chains where Open Standard plans to issue the token.

The competitive backdrop is intensifying beyond Open Standard. Qivalis is backed by 37 European banks developing a euro stablecoin, while 21 financial institutions including Bank of America, Citi, Goldman Sachs and UBS plan to form a company issuing stablecoins for payments and digital asset transactions.

Dollar-denominated tokens may only be the start. Abrams said Open Standard is already seeing demand for stablecoins in other currencies, noting that Bridge issued a euro-backed token for Revolut. "It's purely going to be driven by demands from the network, and I can tell you the network already demands other stablecoins," he said. Looking a decade out, Abrams said he wants Open USD rails to handle "hundreds of trillions of dollars a year" as stablecoins become core global money-movement infrastructure.