Stripe and Co. Take On Circle and Tether in Stablecoins

A year after the passage of the Genius Act legalized stablecoins, a bunch of big financial players have teamed up to launch a new, impressive-sounding stablecoin. Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, Coinbase, BlackRock and BNY are forming a consortium with over 140 firms to launch Open USD, which will debut later this year. 

This is a big deal. Open USD aims to challenge the dominance of Circle and Tether in the $300 billion stablecoin market—and it looks to have a shot at doing so. The Open Standard consortium also has the support of biggest names in tech, e-commerce and fintech, including Google, Shopify and Chime, as well as several foreign banks. Those companies all say they’ll support Open USD in some way: Shopify, for instance, will allow its merchant customers to accept Open USD at checkout. (The news confirms my report on June 3 that this effort was being planned.)