A consortium of payment giants just built a stablecoin designed to make Circle’s business model look outdated. That is the headline, but the pattern underneath is bigger: the same week, a regulatory crackdown in India revealed exactly why people reach for USDT in the first place, and a card that draws directly from a DeFi vault stopped being a concept and became a product.
- Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, Coinbase and 140+ firms unveiled Open USD, a consortium stablecoin that shares reserve yield with partners instead of keeping it
- Six raids in Bengaluru squeezed India’s USDT supply, pushing the local premium above 8.5%
- Stripe’s Privy now lets a debit card pull straight from a DeFi vault, settling in stablecoins while the rest of the balance keeps earning
The through-line is infrastructure catching up to demand. The rails being built this week are the ones that make stablecoins work as money, not just as a store of value.
Visa, Mastercard and 140+ Firms Launch Open USD to Challenge Circle
Source: The Block
Open Standard, a new company led by Bridge co-founder Zach Abrams, unveiled Open USD on Monday with more than 140 founding partners including Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, Coinbase, BlackRock, BNY, Google, Shopify and Stellar. The token, ticker OUSD, launches natively on Solana first, with Stellar, Base and Polygon to follow.
Unlike Circle’s USDC, Open USD charges zero fees on minting and redemption and shares the yield earned on reserves with partner organizations instead of keeping it. Governance sits with a board drawn from partner companies rather than a single issuer, a structure closer to how Visa or Mastercard are run than how most stablecoins are run today.
Circle’s stock dropped sharply on the news. Open USD still has to prove it can win real transaction volume, something earlier consortium stablecoins have struggled with.
Zypto take: A stablecoin where the partners split the reserve yield instead of one company keeping it is a genuinely different business model, and it says something about where this market is heading: stablecoins are turning into shared infrastructure, not proprietary products.
Stellar is a founding launch partner of Open USD, the same blockchain that already powers USDC to Cash, Zypto App’s feature for cashing in or out of USDC at participating MoneyGram locations worldwide. The biggest payment networks in the world are choosing to build on the same rails Zypto users already have in their pocket.
India’s USDT Premium Jumps Above 8.5% After Crypto Remittance Crackdown
Source: CoinDesk
India’s Enforcement Directorate raided six premises in Bengaluru on June 17, targeting five crypto payment firms it accuses of running roughly 25 billion rupees, about $265 million, in unlicensed cross-border transfers using USDT. The agency alleges non-resident Indians used USDT as a stand-in for bank wires, converting rupees to stablecoins, moving them abroad, and selling them back on Indian exchanges to skip formal documentation requirements.
The raids tightened supply. Market makers pulled back on USDT purchases overseas, and the local premium spiked to 8.5%, roughly double its normal 3 to 4% range, with USDT trading at 102.88 rupees against a dollar rate of 94.65.
That premium is really a price signal. It shows how much demand exists for a faster, cheaper cross-border channel even when the formal one is available.
Zypto take: An 8.5% premium on a stablecoin is the market pricing what faster, cheaper cross-border transfers are actually worth to people who need them. The demand is not the problem. The gap between what formal banking costs and what crypto costs is.
That gap is exactly what Zypto App’s cross-border transfers are built to close: 24/7, borderless, almost instant, with no banking windows and no correspondent bank markup sitting in the middle.
Stripe’s Privy Launches a Debit Card That Spends Straight From a DeFi Vault
Source: KuCoin News
Privy, the wallet infrastructure Stripe acquired last year, announced a debit card on Monday that draws funds directly from a user’s DeFi vault at the point of sale. When a purchase is made, the card settles in stablecoins while the wallet grants Stripe a one-time approval to withdraw vault shares, handling redemption and settlement in a single step with no manual withdrawal first.
The card is issued as a prepaid Visa by Lead Bank. Deposited funds keep earning yield inside the vault right up until the moment of payment, rather than sitting idle in a separate spending account. Privy is opening early access to integration teams now, with a broader rollout to follow.
Skipping the manual withdrawal step is the whole idea behind DeFi-native card funding, and it is not a new concept to test.
Zypto take: No manual withdrawal step is the correct design, and it validates a model Zypto has run for a while now.
Zypto Premium VISA Cards already load directly from a DeFi wallet, no exchange account, no custodial platform, no intermediate transfer, converting to spending power the moment the card is loaded rather than at the point of sale. Seeing a payments company as large as Stripe build toward that same direct-from-wallet model is a signal that this is becoming the standard, not the workaround.
Key Takeaways
- Stablecoin infrastructure is consolidating around shared economics. Open USD splitting reserve yield with partners instead of one issuer keeping it all is a structural shift, not a marketing angle.
- The line between holding and spending stablecoins is disappearing. Privy’s vault-linked card removes the manual transfer step that used to sit between earning yield and paying for something.
- Regulatory crackdowns reveal real demand, they do not eliminate it. India’s 8.5% USDT premium is the market pricing the gap between formal and informal remittance channels, a gap that only closes with better-regulated options, not fewer of them.
- Direct-from-wallet card funding is moving from a crypto-native feature to a mainstream industry expectation, which is exactly the kind of validation that matters more than any single feature announcement.
- The throughline across all three stories is the same: crypto is being built to work the way money is supposed to work, available, earning, and spendable, without asking the user to manage the difference.
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