Visa has unveiled a new enterprise stablecoin platform designed to give banks, fintechs and payment providers a single system to manage digital-dollar operations — positioning a fresh rival to Circle’s market-leading USDC.
Called the Visa Stablecoin Platform (VSP), the service will initially support Open USD (OUSD), the new stablecoin launched by Open Standard in June. VSP provides institutions with tools to mint, redeem, store and transfer Open USD, and it includes Wallet-as-a-Service infrastructure, blockchain connectivity and Visa’s existing risk and security controls. Visa says clients can run stablecoin activity on VSP alongside the company’s traditional payments network, rather than replacing their current systems.
“Concepts are one thing; the hard part is the operational reality,” Visa Chief Product and Strategy Officer Jack Forestell said, framing VSP as a single place for institutions to manage stablecoin operations while benefiting from Visa’s controls and network infrastructure.
Open USD’s economics differ from established players like Circle’s USDC. Open Standard has proposed fee-free minting and redemption and plans to share most reserve income with distribution partners after operating costs — a model that drew support from more than 140 companies when the initiative was announced on June 30, including Visa, Mastercard, BlackRock and Coinbase.
VSP also debuts with support for USDC and USDG alongside OUSD, giving institutions multi-coin options within a familiar payments provider stack. Visa has been active in the space already: the company reported a stablecoin settlement run rate of roughly $7 billion as of March 2026.
The arrival of VSP deepens the commercial pathway for Open USD into Visa’s institutional customer base and shifts the project from a consortium proposal toward concrete payments infrastructure. That shift has implications for Circle: markets reacted to Open USD’s launch by punishing Circle’s share price, and Mizuho this week downgraded Circle and cut its price target from $85 to $50, citing potential pressure on Circle’s margins if reserve income flows change in favor of distribution partners.
Still, Open USD faces significant hurdles before it can rival USDC: it must build liquidity, regulatory reach and the wide market adoption that USDC has accrued over years. For Circle, competition now extends beyond who issues a token to who builds and supplies the infrastructure institutions use to manage it.
The coming test will be adoption at scale: whether banks, fintechs and payment providers embrace Visa’s tools — and the business model behind Open USD — in enough volume to challenge USDC’s entrenched position in regulated digital-dollar payments.
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