Visa (NYSE: V) CEO Ryan McInerney declined to position the Open USD stablecoin as a direct competitor to Tether’s USDT or Circle’s USDC during the company’s fiscal third-quarter 2026 earnings conference call. He instead emphasized a deliberately neutral stance focused on supporting the broader stablecoin landscape rather than endorsing any single token.
In response to an analyst question about whether Open USD would ultimately challenge the established leaders in the space, McInerney outlined Visa’s philosophy clearly.
The payments network, he said, intends to stay multi-coin and multi-chain. Its role is not to select winners.
Rather, Visa aims to enable clients to access the stablecoin ecosystem in a secure and scalable manner, irrespective of which particular stablecoin, blockchain network, or underlying infrastructure achieves the greatest adoption over time.
He went on to describe Open Standard, the independent organization behind Open USD (also referred to as OpenUSD or OUSD).
The consortium, which Visa joined alongside a large group of other partners, was structured with neutral governance and shared economic incentives.
Those design choices, McInerney explained, reflect a belief that such a model can help stablecoins achieve meaningful scale specifically in payments use cases.
McInerney acknowledged that while industry discussion of stablecoins remains frequent, real-world adoption has so far been limited primarily to niche applications such as stablecoin-linked cards.
Visa is nonetheless a proud participant in the Open USD effort and sees potential for the token to gain traction as a payments-oriented digital dollar.
The shared-incentive structure, he noted, is intended to encourage ecosystem participants to promote and utilize it.
At the same time, he reiterated that Visa’s longer-term outlook remains multi-chain and multi-coin.
The company is not in the business of declaring winners or losers; its priority is helping clients succeed.
During the same call, McInerney also highlighted related progress.
Visa has been investing across multiple layers of the stablecoin stack—including blockchain infrastructure, issuance, wallets, and applications. In the most recent quarter the company joined Open Standard and launched the Visa Stablecoin Platform.
The platform is designed to support minting, movement, and management of stablecoins, enable partners to settle with Visa in digital dollars, offer on-chain wallet infrastructure, and facilitate conversions between fiat and stablecoins, beginning with Open USD.
These remarks come against a backdrop of growing institutional interest in dollar-pegged tokens.
Open USD was structured so that businesses can mint and redeem without fees or volume caps, with most reserve yield returning to participants after a management fee.
That economic model has fueled market discussion about its potential impact on existing issuers.
Visa’s leadership, however, continues to frame its involvement as infrastructure support rather than a bet on any one token prevailing.
By maintaining a multi-coin posture, Visa positions itself as a connective layer that can work with whichever stablecoins gain traction, while still participating in new initiatives such as Open USD. The comments underscore a pragmatic approach: engage actively in the evolving space, contribute to new standards where appropriate