Visa is planting a flag in stablecoins. The payments network introduced the Visa Stablecoin Platform, an enterprise service that lets banks, fintechs and payment firms issue, hold, transfer and redeem stablecoins through Visa's infrastructure, according to CoinDesk. Alongside it, Visa is backing Open USD, a new dollar token from a broad industry group, in a move squarely aimed at the economics of the current market leaders.
What a stablecoin is, and why Visa cares
A stablecoin is a crypto token designed to hold a steady value, almost always pegged one-to-one to the US dollar and backed by reserves of cash and short-term government debt. Because they settle in seconds and around the clock, stablecoins have become a fast, cheap way to move dollars, including across borders, outside the traditional banking rails.
That is precisely why a company like Visa, whose business is moving money, cannot ignore them: left to others, stablecoins could route payments around Visa's network. By supplying the plumbing to issue and manage them, Visa positions itself as infrastructure for the new system rather than a casualty of it.
The threat to Circle
The competitive edge of Open USD is in how it splits the money. Stablecoin issuers make most of their income from the interest earned on the reserves that back the token. Open USD, run by a group called Open Standard, is designed to eliminate minting and redemption fees and hand nearly all of that reserve income back to the banks and firms that distribute it, per CoinDesk, rather than keeping it at the issuer.
That is a direct strike at Circle, the company behind USDC, the world's second-largest stablecoin after Tether's USDT. Circle earns the overwhelming majority of its revenue from interest on USDC's reserves, so a rival that gives that yield away threatens its core model, not just its market share. The group behind Open USD is not fringe: its backers include Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, BlackRock and Coinbase, among more than 140 companies, according to CoinDesk's reporting on the launch.
The market reaction
Investors have taken the threat seriously. Circle's stock slipped around 5% on the day of Visa's platform announcement, according to CoinDesk. That came on top of a far sharper drop two weeks earlier: when the Open USD consortium was first unveiled on June 30, Circle shares fell about 17%, closing below $63, per CoinDesk. The company, which went public in 2025, has given back a large part of its earlier gains as the competitive picture has darkened.
The bigger shift
The episode says something about where stablecoins are heading. A US law passed in 2025 created a federal framework for dollar-backed tokens, drawing established finance, card networks, banks and asset managers, into a market once dominated by crypto-native firms. As they arrive, the competition is moving from who has regulatory approval to who offers the best terms, and giving the reserve yield to distributors is a powerful lure.
For Circle, the challenge is that its biggest advantage, an early lead and trusted brand in regulated stablecoins, is now being met by rivals with enormous distribution and deep pockets. For Visa, the calculation is simpler: better to build the tollbooth for the new road than to watch traffic leave the old one. Whether Open USD gains real traction once it launches is still unproven, and Boursel does not offer investment advice.
