Visa CEO Ryan McInerney said the payments giant will stay multi-coin and multi-chain as 140-plus partners back Open USD. No exclusive deal with the new stablecoin.
Visa will not anoint a single stablecoin winner. Chief Executive Ryan McInerney said the payments company plans to stay "multi-coin, multi-chain" during its fiscal third-quarter earnings call on July 28.
"Our role is not to pick winners," McInerney told analysts. "Our role is to help clients connect to whichever tokens and networks gain real use."
The remarks came as Open USD, a token backed by an independent group called Open Standard, prepares to launch later this year. More than 140 companies count themselves as backers. That list includes Mastercard, Stripe, Coinbase, BlackRock, BNY and Google. Visa is one of the supporters too. McInerney's comments suggest that support does not translate to an exclusive arrangement.
Open Standard says businesses will be able to mint and redeem Open USD without fees or volume limits once it goes live. Most of the revenue earned from the reserves backing the token would flow back to the companies that adopt and distribute it. That structure differs from how Tether and Circle run their stablecoins. Those two companies control their own reserve management and keep the related profits.
Open Standard says an independent team and its partners will oversee Open USD's governance. These are still planned features, since the token has not launched yet.
ARK Invest researcher Lorenzo Valente said partner support for Open USD may be "closer to a soft LOI than a strategic bet." That is his own interpretation, not a term disclosed by Visa or Open Standard.
Neither company has published details on how much money, distribution or balance sheet backing each partner is required to provide. The launch of Open USD has already raised questions elsewhere in the market.
Circle's stock dropped 17.5% on June 30. Index removals from Russell also happened that day, so it is hard to say how much of the drop came from Open USD news alone.
Visa's clearest move so far is a product it launched itself. On July 16, the company rolled out the Visa Stablecoin Platform for banks, fintechs and crypto companies. The platform currently gives users access to Open USD, including tools to mint, burn, store and transfer the token. It runs inside an environment managed by Visa.
Visa said the platform will also link up with its existing settlement, card and money movement services. That means it could support other stablecoins too, not just Open USD.
In June, Visa reported that its stablecoin settlement activity reached an annualized run rate of about $7 billion as of March 2026. The figure shows Visa is already active in this space beyond any single token.
Open Standard has not shared an exact launch date, starting supply or expected transaction volume for Open USD. Since the token is not live, there is no on-chain data yet to compare it with Tether or Circle's coin.
The real test will come after launch, when it becomes clear whether Visa's 140-plus partners actually build Open USD into their payment and trading products. Visa has already opened a path for the token through its own platform. McInerney's comments make clear the company plans to keep supporting rival tokens at the same time.
Mastercard (MA) carries an Alpha Score of 70/100, a Moderate rating in the Financials sector.
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