Open Standard sets OUSD fee model and equity pool for stablecoin partners

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OUSD fee model & equity

Highlights

OpenUSD will charge a 0.1 basis point management fee on payment volume, capped at $0.01 per payment, as outlined in private documents.
Partners can earn equity in Open Standard based on monthly OUSD holdings and transaction flows, with a $50 million minimum and a 5% ownership cap per partner.
OUSD redistributes reserve income to partners post-fee, positioning itself for cross-border settlements and diverging from USDT and USDC with shared economic incentives.

Partner fee structure and ownership incentives

As first reported by CoinDesk, private documents show OpenUSD will charge a 0.1 basis point management fee on payment volume, capped at $0.01 per payment. The fee is paid to Open Standard, the company behind the stablecoin, whose founding partners are Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, Coinbase and Shopify.

The documentation states that payments of $1,000 or more reach the $0.01 ceiling, while smaller transactions pay 0.1 basis point of the transferred amount. On a hypothetical $1 million transfer, the standard calculation would imply a $10 fee, but the cap reduces that charge to $0.01.

Open Standard is also offering partners a path to earn equity in the project based on OUSD holdings and transaction flows. The documents state that the platform measures how much of the stablecoin partners hold and move each month to determine their share of the annual equity earn-in pool, with a minimum threshold of $50 million and a maximum 5% ownership cap for any single partner.

Payments strategy and industry implications

OUSD is designed to support cross-border settlement while reducing the need for fiat currency conversions, positioning the stablecoin as infrastructure for global payments rather than a retail trading token. That approach differs from models such as Tether's USDT and Circle's USDC, where reserve interest remains with the issuer, because OUSD distributes that income to partners after deducting the management fee.

Visa is also advancing implementation work for firms that plan to connect to the network. Alongside the fee and equity documents, the company released more than 100 pages of technical implementation materials and user guidance for partners integrating OUSD through the Visa Stablecoin Platform.

In our earlier coverage of executive incentive payouts at South Africa’s JSE Top 200 companies, we highlighted how variable compensation for CEOs and CFOs has been rising much faster than fixed pay. We also noted that new Companies Act requirements introduced in May 2026 increase transparency through pay-ratio disclosures and add binding shareholder votes that can penalize remuneration-committee directors after repeated rejections.

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