Visa Throws Its Weight Behind Open USD as Circle Shares Slide

Visa launches its stablecoin platform for institutions

Visa introduced the Visa Stablecoin Platform, or VSP, on 16 July 2026. The enterprise service lets banks, fintechs and payment providers mint, hold, move and redeem stablecoins through a single Visa-managed environment. Institutions can run these operations without connecting to a public blockchain themselves. Visa opened the platform to select institutional clients at launch, in an early access phase. The company framed VSP as a way to handle the operational side of stablecoins. Visa said that operational work, not the underlying idea, is what has slowed adoption among large institutions. The launch extends Visa's push into crypto services for financial firms.

The platform bundles wallets and blockchain tools

The platform provides wallet-as-a-service infrastructure, blockchain connectivity, and tools for minting and redeeming tokens. It adds security controls built for regulated firms. These include dual-approval workflows, audit logs and transfer allow lists. A bank on the platform never has to manage a private key, choose a gas fee, or reconcile a multi-chain transfer on its own. VSP also connects to Visa's existing payment network, so institutions can tie stablecoin activity to systems they already use. Jack Forestell, Visa's chief product and strategy officer, tied the launch to the demands of running stablecoins at scale.

"Stablecoins are opening up a new layer of programmable money, but for most institutions the hard part isn't the concept, it's the operational reality.", 16 July 2026. — Jack Forestell, Chief Product and Strategy Officer, Visa

The platform starts with the Open USD token

VSP begins with Open USD, also written OUSD, a dollar-pegged token introduced by the Open Standard consortium. The Open Standard group unveiled the token in late June 2026. Institutions can mint and redeem Open USD with no fees and no volume caps. Visa said the token matches its aim of cutting the manual work behind institutional stablecoin use. Open USD is the platform's first supported token.

A broad group of firms backs Open USD

Open Standard, the group behind Open USD, counts Visa, BlackRock, Alphabet and Coinbase among its backers. The wider consortium includes more than 140 companies, among them Mastercard and Stripe. Open USD returns nearly all of the income earned on its reserves to distribution partners, after a management fee, rather than to a single issuer. Backers would share in the token's reserve earnings under that model. The token is governed collectively rather than by one company. That design could shift the economics of stablecoins toward the firms that distribute them and away from the companies that issue them.

USDC leads its rivals as competition grows

The launch adds pressure on Circle, whose USDC ranks as the second-largest stablecoin behind Tether's USDT. USDC held a market capitalization near $73.24 billion, while USDT stood at about $184.09 billion (CoinPaprika, 17 July 2026). Both tokens hold a market value far above most rivals. According to CoinDesk, Circle shares fell about 5% on 16 July 2026 as investors weighed the new competition. Open USD's no-fee model is a direct challenge to issuers that keep reserve income for themselves.

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