Visa Launches Stablecoin Platform Built on Open USD

Visa launched the Visa Stablecoin Platform, an enterprise system for financial institutions built around the Open USD stablecoin, the payments company's head of crypto, Cuy Sheffield, said on X on Wednesday.

"Excited to launch the Visa Stablecoin Platform as the best way to access and use Open USD," Sheffield wrote in the announcement.

Fortune, which published an exclusive report tied to the launch, said the platform provides stablecoin services to more than 200 million merchants.

The enterprise system initially supports Open USD, includes a Wallet-as-a-Service offering, and is rolling out for beta testing with select clients.

Open USD, or OUSD, is a stablecoin unveiled on June 30 by Open Standard, a consortium of more than 140 companies including Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, Coinbase, and BlackRock. The token's design routes reserve yield to distribution partners rather than to a single issuer, a structure the consortium has positioned against the traditional model in which the issuer keeps reserve earnings. OUSD was not live at the time of its unveiling.

The platform extends Visa's existing crypto work, which includes USDC settlement and a tokenization platform for institutions. It is distinct from those earlier products, targeting institutional minting, movement, and management of stablecoins rather than card settlement alone.

The launch positions Visa as a distribution and operations layer for the consortium token it helped back. Remaining details, including the platform's general availability timeline and the full set of supported stablecoins beyond OUSD, were not confirmed through primary Visa channels at publication.