Visa Opens a Stablecoin Platform for Open USD, Circle's New Rival

Visa built a stablecoin platform, and it did not build it for Circle. The company launched the Visa Stablecoin Platform, or VSP, a system that lets banks, fintechs and payment providers mint and redeem digital dollars from one place. Its first supported token is Open USD, the Open Standard stablecoin that already counts more than 140 backers. Circle's stock has spent the week paying for it.

What the platform does

VSP bundles the unglamorous parts of running a stablecoin. Visa is supplying Wallet-as-a-Service infrastructure and the same risk and security controls that already sit behind its card network, then wiring all of it to the chains the token runs on. Clients plug it into their existing payment products rather than ripping them out. "The hard part isn't the concept, it's the operational reality," said Jack Forestell, Visa's chief product and strategy officer. Visa is not new to this. It reported a stablecoin settlement run rate of about $7 billion as of March 2026.

Why Circle is nervous

Open USD does not make money the way USDC does. Open Standard plans to charge nothing to mint or redeem the token, then return most of the reserve income to the partners distributing it, after operating costs. That inverts the model that made Circle valuable, where the issuer keeps the yield on the dollars backing the coin. VSP hands that structure a distribution channel running straight into Visa's institutional clients. For Circle, the fight is no longer just about who issues the token. It is about who controls the rails institutions use to run it.

The Wall Street reaction

Mizuho downgraded Circle this week and cut its price target from $85 to $50, warning that Open USD could squeeze the margins on Circle's reserve income. Circle shares had already dropped when the token launched on June 30, a rollout backed by Mastercard and BlackRock among more than 140 firms.

What is still unproven

Open USD has to earn what USDC spent years building. Its liquidity is thin, its regulatory reach is untested, and adoption has barely started. A backer list and a Visa integration are not the same as years of settled volume. The real question is narrow: whether banks and fintechs actually switch VSP on, and at what scale.