OpenUSD's fee and equity terms surface: a one-cent cap and warrants for the biggest holders
OpenUSD's governance company Open Standard will charge a 0.1-basis-point payment fee capped at one cent and offer founding partners equity based on how much of the stablecoin they hold and move, per private documents reported by CoinDesk.
The consortium stablecoin launched this year by Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, Coinbase and Shopify now has a published cost of use — at least to its partners. According to private documents reported by CoinDesk on November 3, Open Standard, the governance company behind OpenUSD (OUSD), will levy a 0.1-basis-point management fee on payment volume, capped at $0.01 per payment.
The mechanics, per the documents CoinDesk describes: payments of $1,000 or more pay the one-cent cap; smaller payments pay 0.1 basis point of the amount. CoinDesk notes that moving $1 million at the uncapped rate would notionally cost $10, but the cap reduces that to a cent. The fee flows to Open Standard, whose founding partners have each committed "$1 billion-plus" in near-term launch liquidity, per the same reporting.
The pitch distinguishing OUSD from Tether's USDT and Circle's USDC, per CoinDesk, is reserve interest: where those issuers keep it, OUSD distributes reserve interest to its partners, minus the capped fee. Open Standard says OUSD is designed to make cross-border settlement near-frictionless and cut fiat conversions toward zero — a claim attributable to the consortium, not independently demonstrated.
Separately, Open Standard is offering partners equity. Each month the platform measures how much OUSD a partner holds and moves, which sets their share of an annual equity earn-in pool. Per the document CoinDesk cites, a partner needs at least $50 million in holdings/flows to qualify, and any single partner is capped at 5% ownership once all warrants are earned. Visa also released over 100 pages of technical and integration guidance for firms onboarding via its Visa Stablecoin Platform.
Key facts
- Management fee: 0.1 basis point on payment volume, capped at $0.01 per payment (CoinDesk, private documents).
- Fee recipient: Open Standard; founding partners Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, Coinbase, Shopify, each committing $1B+ launch liquidity (CoinDesk).
- Reserve interest distributed to partners, not retained by an issuer (CoinDesk).
- Equity earn-in pool: monthly measure of holdings and flows; $50M minimum to qualify; 5% per-partner ownership cap (CoinDesk).
- Visa released 100+ pages of implementation guidance for the Visa Stablecoin Platform (CoinDesk).
The real-world read These terms rest on documents CoinDesk says it saw privately — not a public disclosure by Open Standard, and not corroborated elsewhere, so treat the figures as reported-not-confirmed. Two structural points the framing soft-pedals: the distributed reserve interest goes to partners, not OUSD holders — so "unlike USDT and USDC" doesn't mean end users earn anything. And the equity pool, with its $50M floor and reward-by-volume design, is built to concentrate upside among the largest incumbents already running the network. Note too that the CoinDesk page carried a separate sponsored item touting "diversified RWA stablecoins" and 5–7% yields; that is marketing, unrelated to OUSD, and should not be read as part of this story.
This is news coverage, not financial advice.