Summary
Visa CEO Ryan McInerney announced the company will maintain a neutral, multi-coin and multi-chain approach to stablecoins, refusing to endorse any single token. The comments came during Visa's earnings call in response to questions about Open USD (OUSD), a new institutional stablecoin backed by a consortium of 140+ companies including Visa, Mastercard, BlackRock, Coinbase, BNY, Stripe, and Western Union. OUSD will launch on Ethereum and differentiates itself by distributing reserve income to partners and allowing fee-free minting/redeeming. Mizuho downgraded Circle following the OUSD announcement, and Bernstein trimmed Circle's valuation. Visa earlier launched an internal platform to help banks and fintechs use stablecoins, initially integrating OUSD.
Key Facts
- Visa CEO: "Our role is not to pick winners" — multi-coin, multi-chain strategy
- Open USD (OUSD): institutional stablecoin backed by 140+ company consortium
- Launch partners: Visa, Mastercard, BlackRock, Coinbase, BNY, Stripe, Western Union
- OUSD launching on Ethereum; governed by Open Standard (independent company)
- Key differentiator: distributes reserve income to partners; fee-free minting/redeeming
- Mizuho downgraded Circle; Bernstein trimmed Circle's valuation
- Visa launched internal platform for banks/fintechs to use stablecoins, initially integrating OUSD
- Ark Invest questioned depth of partner commitments — may be "soft letter of intent"
- Trading Strategy CEO: Visa's neutrality is a tactic to slow stablecoins that could disrupt its core business
- Visa's infrastructure-agnostic strategy insulates it from project-level risks and regulatory shifts
- Stablecoins have yet to scale beyond a few use cases like stablecoin-linked cards
Why It Matters
Visa's multi-coin strategy is a sophisticated hedge. By refusing to pick winners, Visa positions itself as the neutral infrastructure layer that connects any stablecoin to any payment flow — what Mizuho called the "stablecoin of stablecoins." The OUSD consortium model challenges the single-issuer model of USDT and USDC by distributing economics to partners. If OUSD succeeds, it could commoditize stablecoins and reduce the moats of incumbent issuers. But Visa's neutrality also insulates it: if OUSD fails, Visa simply supports the next stablecoin. The strategy pressures all stablecoin issuers to compete on transparency and reliability rather than network effects.