What OpenUSD Tells Us About the Future of Stablecoins

The constitution of the open standard in June 2026 was one of the most high-profile events in the stablecoin world. It announced backing from 140 companies, including the who's who of industry: Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Stripe, Google, Coinbase, Shopify, BlackRock, Chime, DoorDash, Remitly, and many others. These members include those who want to own the next settlement standard and those who want to rent it, but with a seat at the table.

Settlement standards, like all standards, are not based on the best technology. They are set when a sizable number of users agree to treat them as the standard and bring enough volume so others have no choice but to operate within them. Visa and MasterCard are living proof. Both started as organisations with member banks agreeing to use shared rails. OpenUSD is using the same playbook to create a new standard. Whether OpenUSD will become the standard is something the future will tell. But it's worth asking why each of these 140 members is joining. Not all of them are joining for the same reason, and their reasons point to expectations from the future of dollar settlement.

The list of members divides cleanly into two groups. The first group wants to set the standard and own the infrastructure under it. Visa and MasterCard would want their business on this settlement rail. BlackRock would manage the reserve assets. Stripe, through Bridge, will build the settlement plumbing. BNY will be a custody bank. These firms have the infrastructure to contribute and the ambition to own the settlement standard.

The second group wants to be customers of the standard, with a seat at the table. In doing so, they want to be favourably treated by this new rail. Shopify would want cheaper settlement and stablecoin acceptance for its merchants. DoorDash would want cheap, instant payouts to a large base of gig workers. Chime would want low-cost money movement and access to the consumer base. Remitly would want the dollar leg of the cross-border business commoditised. None of them wants to operate the settlement standard, but wants to consume it on terms favourable to their business.

This is also déjà vu for anyone following payments. In 2019, Visa, MasterCard, and Stripe were founding members of Facebook's Libra Association. Yet all three walked out within months. Libra then became Diem, and Diem eventually died. Such a coalition of giants brings its own strengths, but also has its own fragility. Whenever a strategic conflict or a regulator tests them, it is very likely to fail.

What is different about OpenUSD is that it tries to address Libra's failure. Libra's controlling vision was Facebook's, which gave regulators an easy target. OpenUSD, by contrast, has a board with no single owner, making it more robust. When Libra signalled its desire to mint a new synthetic currency unit, it terrified central banks. OpenUSD is a dollar token, which is now politically acceptable. And the regulatory ground has evolved. The Genius Act has given the USA its stablecoin framework with defined rules. Libra was operating in a vacuum, and regulators feared that. Whether OpenUSD succeeds is something we will see, but it is designed as a genuine response to how the last attempt failed.

What does OpenUSD mean for cross-border payments? OpenUSD is essentially a consortium to optimise dollar-to-dollar settlement among sophisticated members. For cross-border payments, this leg is not the real problem. The hard and expensive part, which keeps corridor costs high, is the last mile: converting to a thin, illiquid receiving currency and getting money into the local infrastructure there. The US dollar consortium will not touch this leg. OpenUSD will play in and improve the dollar-heavy, already well-served, highly formal corridors, leaving the thin receiving corridors as they are today.

This also makes Remitly's membership an interesting signal. Remitly's value proposition is last-mile reach into the hard corridors, and it has just joined a consortium that solves the dollar leg. Remitly is joining because this consortium will commoditise the easy leg and reduce its costs, but will leave its moat untouched. OpenUSD won't fix the harder corridors, because it's not a problem for its member institutions. The institutions operating in the harder corridors will join late, as customers rather than as ones designing the standard.