Visa, Mastercard, Coinbase join Open USD partner network

Open Standard announced that more than 140 businesses, including Visa, Mastercard and Coinbase, have joined Open USD. The stablecoin lets partner firms mint and redeem tokens at no cost and receive a share of reserve earnings after a management fee. Partners receive seats on the project’s governance board and unlimited minting and redemption rights.

Open USD routes reserve yield to partner businesses rather than paying interest directly to holders. Reserve earnings are distributed to partners net of fees. Partners can use those earnings to provide liquidity on decentralized exchanges, increase lending rates where Open USD is used as collateral, offer wallet cashback or subsidize bridge and routing fees. The partner list includes wallets, exchanges and DeFi protocols such as Aave, Morpho, MetaMask and Trust Wallet.

Open Standard plans native support for Open USD on the Plasma and Tempo chains later this year. Plasma markets features such as instant transfers, global card spending, cashback and balance-based earnings through a product called Plasma One. Native chain support would allow partner-led on-chain rewards and incentive programs to appear directly in wallets and decentralized apps on those networks.

Regulation is shaping how rewards can be delivered. The GENIUS Act bars stablecoin issuers from paying interest directly to holders while leaving room for affiliates, wallets and payment firms to offer rewards. Coinbase offers rewards on USDC balances and PayPal pays rewards on PYUSD; regulators and banks have examined such programs as a way to shift deposits away from traditional banks. Open USD’s model places the responsibility for turning reserve income into user-facing incentives with partners rather than the issuer.

The stablecoin market is large. Total supply is near $312 billion, with Tether at about $184.6 billion and USDC around $73.9 billion. Citi projects the stablecoin market could reach $1.9 trillion in a 2030 base case and $4 trillion in a bull case. At a 3.7% yield, roughly where short-term Treasuries trade now, each $1 billion of Open USD in circulation would generate about $37 million a year in gross reserve income before fees and costs; at $25 billion that estimate rises to roughly $925 million.

Circle, the issuer of USDC, reported $653 million in reserve income in the first quarter of 2026 against $407 million in distribution, transaction and other costs. Circle’s filings show it shares reserve-related income with Coinbase to support liquidity. After Open USD’s partner list became public, Circle’s shares fell as much as 17% intraday as investors priced in potential pressure on reserve income streams.

Partners have options for the income they receive. They can deploy it into sustained DeFi incentives such as liquidity mining, higher APYs for lending markets, wallet cashback and routing rebates. Alternatively, partners can treat reserve income as additional margin and use incentives only intermittently, keeping Open USD circulation concentrated in payment and settlement rails while established stablecoins retain deep liquidity and broad collateral use.

The announcement assigns incentive decisions to a broad group of payment firms, wallets and exchanges rather than to a single issuer. Market participants are watching whether partner-led reserve sharing changes where liquidity and trading volume concentrate across stablecoins and chains.