Visa won't pick stablecoin winners, CEO says

Visa CEO Ryan McInerney declined to position Open USD as a direct competitor to Tether's USDT or Circle's USDC during the company's Q3 FY2026 earnings call. Instead, he emphasized that Visa intends to remain "multi-coin and multi-chain," supporting the broader stablecoin ecosystem rather than betting on any single token.

"Our role is not to select winners," McInerney told analysts. "Rather, Visa aims to enable clients to access the stablecoin ecosystem in a secure and scalable manner, irrespective of which particular stablecoin or blockchain achieves the greatest adoption over time."

What is Open USD and why did Visa join?

Open USD (also called OpenUSD or OUSD) is a stablecoin built by Open Standard, an independent consortium Visa joined alongside multiple partners. The governance structure is deliberately neutral, with shared economic incentives across participants.

McInerney explained that businesses can mint and redeem Open USD without fees or volume caps. Most reserve yield returns to participants after a management fee. This economic model has fueled speculation about whether it could undercut established issuers like Tether and Circle, which retain the majority of reserve interest for themselves.

But Visa's leadership framed the involvement as infrastructure support, not a competitive play. The company is building tools that work with any stablecoin that gains traction.

Visa's stablecoin infrastructure push

During the same earnings call, McInerney outlined Visa's broader stablecoin strategy. The company launched the Visa Stablecoin Platform this quarter, designed to handle minting, movement, and management of stablecoins. The platform enables partners to settle with Visa in digital dollars, offers on-chain wallet infrastructure, and facilitates fiat-to-stablecoin conversions, starting with Open USD.

Visa has invested across multiple layers of the stablecoin stack: blockchain infrastructure, issuance, wallets, and applications. The company processed over $2.5 billion in stablecoin settlements in 2024, building on USDC settlement pilots it launched on Ethereum in 2021 and expanded to Solana in 2023.

Why real-world adoption remains limited

McInerney acknowledged a gap between industry discussion and actual usage. Real-world stablecoin adoption has so far been "limited primarily to niche applications such as stablecoin-linked cards." The shared-incentive structure of Open USD, he noted, is intended to encourage ecosystem participants to actively promote and use the token for payments.

This admission matters. Despite years of hype, stablecoins remain primarily a crypto trading tool, not a mainstream payments rail. Visa's neutral stance hedges against this uncertainty. If Open USD fails to gain traction, Visa's infrastructure still works with USDT, USDC, or whatever emerges next.

What this signals for USDT and USDC

Open USD's fee-free minting and yield-sharing model could pressure existing issuers on economics. But Tether and Circle have entrenched distribution, regulatory relationships, and years of liquidity depth. Visa's refusal to position Open USD as a competitor suggests even the consortium's own backers don't expect a quick displacement.

The more interesting implication: Visa's multi-coin posture validates the idea that stablecoin competition will persist. There won't be one winner. The payments network that connects them all, however, might be Visa.

Source: Crowdfund Insider