Every so often, Ripple turns up somewhere that makes XRP (CRYPTO:XRP) investors take notice. This time it’s the launch lineup for Open USD, a new stablecoin backed by Mastercard, Visa, Stripe, BlackRock, and more than 140 other companies.
However, Open USD isn’t Ripple’s coin—it’s a shared stablecoin run by an independent company, Open Standard, and governed by a board of its partners, with Ripple just one name on the list.
Ripple signed on as a day-one integration partner, which means it’s putting the XRP Ledger forward as one of the rails the coin can run on, not issuing or controlling it. So, does Ripple being part of a stablecoin this big do anything for XRP?
What Open USD Is, and Who’s Behind It
Open USD (OUSD) is a new dollar stablecoin with an unusually heavy lineup behind it. It comes from Open Standard, an independent company set up to run the coin, with backing from payment networks, banks, tech giants, and crypto firms, more than 140 in all. The plan is to go live later this year.
Reports in early June pointed to Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, and Coinbase working on a coin to challenge Tether and Circle—the two issuers that control most of the stablecoin market. Open USD is that effort going public, now with names like BlackRock, BNY, Google, and Shopify attached.
Ripple is on that list too, alongside other crypto names like Coinbase, Solana, Stellar, and Polygon. That’s the detail XRP holders latch onto, but it’s worth keeping in proportion. Ripple is one partner among many, and several blockchains are in the mix, not just the XRP Ledger.
OUSD is Desgined to Compete With Tether and Circle
Most people assume one dollar stablecoin is much like another, but the thing is that they differ in one key area: who pockets the money they quietly throw off. Issuers take in dollars, park them in safe assets like Treasury bills, and keep the interest, while the coin stays free to use.
That setup is enormously profitable. Tether, which runs the largest stablecoin, earned more than $10 billion in 2025 almost entirely from interest on its reserves, while Circle, the second biggest, makes money the same way but hands about half of it to Coinbase for distribution.
Open USD goes straight at that model. The coin is free to mint and redeem with no volume caps, and the reserve earnings go to the partner companies instead of a single issuer, minus a small fee to cover costs. The businesses moving the money get to keep the interest the incumbents have kept for themselves.
Moreover, the model has a legal advantage. The GENIUS Act bars stablecoin issuers from paying yield to the people who hold the coin, but it says nothing about paying the partner businesses, which is the lane Open USD uses. A coin that cheap and that closely aligned with the companies using it is a real threat to how Tether and Circle make their money.
Why Ripple Backed a Stablecoin It Doesn’t Own
Ripple’s decision looks odd at first, because it already has a stablecoin of its own. RLUSD launched at the end of 2024 and has grown into a top-ten dollar token that runs on the XRP Ledger and Ethereum. So, it is fair to ask why Ripple would help build a rival chasing the same institutional customers.
The answer is in how Ripple joined. By signing on as an integration partner, it gets to keep RLUSD and still put the XRP Ledger underneath Open USD, so its ledger handles some of the traffic no matter which stablecoin comes out on top—and this fits a pattern already in motion.
The big card networks have spent the past year settling payments across several blockchains, and Mastercard already settles Ripple’s own RLUSD alongside USDC. Ripple is doing the same thing here, putting the XRP Ledger forward as neutral ground to claim a spot on as many rails as possible. But the ledger is only one of several chains in the Open USD lineup, with no promise it becomes the main settlement layer.
Why This Helps Ripple More Than XRP
All of this is a win for the Ripple network, and whether it reaches the XRP token is a separate question—and the honest answer is not by much. Even if Open USD ends up running on the XRP Ledger, transactions there cost fractions of a cent, so the coin moving across it would burn only a trickle of XRP. A busy settlement rail does not automatically turn into meaningful demand for the token that powers it.
So far this year, Ripple has racked up partnerships, bank deals, and a fast-growing RLUSD, and the XRP price has fallen through all of it. The company keeps winning while the token keeps waiting, and Open USD looks like more of the same—a strong move for Ripple that gives XRP no clear reason to climb.
Then again, the consortium itself is far from a sure thing. Coins steered by a big group of companies are hard to pull off, as Facebook learned when its Libra project—backed by a similar lineup of payment giants—drew enough regulatory pressure to fall apart before it ever launched. The rules are friendlier this time, but a coin jointly run by the biggest names in payments will still draw a hard look from antitrust regulators. For XRP holders, that is one more reason not to expect the deal to move the XRP price on its own.
Will Open USD Do Anything for XRP?
For now, Open USD is a win Ripple can claim but not so much for the XRP token. The more interesting twist is that Ripple may have just helped build a future competitor to its own RLUSD, a Visa- and Mastercard-backed coin aimed at the same institutional payments RLUSD was made for. That captures the strange spot XRP is in this year, where Ripple’s success as a company and the token’s price have drifted apart.
Only one thing would change the picture for XRP: settlement. If meaningful Open USD volume ends up flowing across the XRP Ledger once the coin goes live, that brings liquidity and on-ledger activity the token could benefit from. Until that happens, the deal says more about Ripple’s ambitions than about where XRP goes next.
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.