OUSD Launches Stablecoin Model Inverting Traditional Economic Premise
Five major payment giants, including Coinbase, Mastercard, Shopify, Stripe, and Visa, have committed $1 billion to launch Open USD (OUSD), a stablecoin that inverts the traditional economic model by sharing reserve revenue directly with distribution partners. Launched on September 23, 2026, OUSD operates on Ethereum, Solana, Coinbase’s Base, and the Stripe-backed Tempo blockchain. Unlike other stablecoins that typically charge fees for minting or burning, OUSD eliminates these fees and aims to remove the friction that acts as a tax on institutional users.
CEO Zach Abrams of Open Standard explained to CoinDesk, “Every other stablecoin is building a fund. We’re building money.” OUSD’s mechanism directly aligns partners with the network’s long-term success by distributing equity tied to supply growth and transaction activity. This model, which has grown from 140 partners to over 200, including major banks like UBS, DBS, and ANZ, aims to incentivize adoption through direct financial alignment.
The project’s equity-for-usage model is set to distribute the “overwhelming majority” of Open Standard’s equity over the next four to five years. This strategy ensures that partners are not just users but stakeholders with a vested interest in the network’s velocity. However, the model faces its first major test with the opening of Coinbase access on October 1, 2026, just as the UK FCA crypto gateway opens for applications.
OUSD is entering a $300 billion market dominated by Tether and Circle, with significant inertia in existing payment rails. Projected targets of $10 billion in volume during 2027 and potentially $100 billion over several years rely on the assumption that founding partners will prioritize OUSD over their existing stablecoin integrations. Execution risks remain, as the cohesion of the consortium is unproven, and the history of the partner list is marked by friction. Managing a group of 200-plus entities is a logistical and political challenge that dwarfs the technical task of issuing a token. The project is a bet that the future of money is a shared infrastructure, and one week in, this bet has not yet been disproven.
Source: forkast.news — Inverting the Stablecoin Tax: OUSD and the Equity-for-Usage Play
