Open USD went live on Ethereum, Solana, Base, and Tempo with a fee structure that attacks Circle's mint-and-burn economics rather than its ticker — and with Coinbase, Mastercard, Shopify, Stripe, and Visa as founders of the company behind it.
Open Standard, an independent issuer those five firms founded, says businesses can mint and redeem OUSD one-for-one with no mint or burn fees. The network instead charges a small, predictable transaction fee. Partners can earn rewards for adopting and transacting in the token, and the project has talked about distributing most of its equity over time based on how partners grow the network. Stripe is offering OUSD across Treasury, Issuing, Global Payouts, and onramps. Mastercard has listed it beside USDC, PayPal's PYUSD, and USDG. Ramp is using Stripe to power accounts that can hold OUSD. Stripe says Treasury balances can be funded from wallets on those four chains or with fiat via ACH, SEPA, and wire, and spent on stablecoin cards in more than 100 countries. The launch arrived with more than 200 network partners.
Existing dollar coins remain cost-prohibitive for high-volume cross-border shops, Stripe argued, because mint and burn fees swing with the conversion. OUSD's pitch is that payments companies should own the economics of the rail they already distribute. That is a coalition against a single-issuer float, not a meme coin. Circle still has the liquidity. Open Standard has the card networks.
The second-order fight is distribution, not a peg. A stablecoin that pays its distributors in fees and equity is a payments product wearing a token. If minting is free and the rent sits on transactions, USDC's advantage shrinks to depth and habit. The names on the cap table are the distribution. The zero mint fee is the weapon.
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