Vice President, Digital Wallet

Twenty one of the world's biggest banks are building their own stablecoin. Twenty one banks, from Goldman Sachs to Deutsche Bank, are forming a company to issue a dollar stablecoin by 2027, but a 140-company rival led by Visa and Stripe already launched Open USD in July and knocked nearly a fifth off Circle's stock. Goldman Sachs, Citi and Bank of America are leading 21 banks into a joint dollar stablecoin, but they're not just chasing Tether and Circle anymore. A second army of 140 companies got there first. The banking world spent a decade treating stablecoins as something crypto traders used to dodge dollar wire fees. That posture is officially dead. Twenty one of the largest financial institutions on earth, anchored by Goldman Sachs, Citi and Bank of America, have committed to forming a new company in the second half of 2026 that will issue a dollar-pegged stablecoin, with a target launch in the first half of 2027. A euro version is already queued up behind it. This isn't a pilot program buried in an innovation lab. The roster reads like a who's who of global finance: Capital One, Fidelity, PNC, Scotiabank, TD Bank, Wells Fargo and WisdomTree out of North America; Santander, BBVA, Commerzbank, Crédit Agricole, Deutsche Bank, Lloyds, Rabobank and UBS from Europe; MUFG, Standard Bank and Sirius International Holding covering Asia, Africa and the Middle East. The group started with just ten banks when it first went public in October 2025, according to reporting from Forkast and the Yahoo Finance crypto desk. It has more than doubled since. Here's what's actually driving this. The GENIUS Act gave stablecoin issuers in the U.S. a real regulatory framework for the first time, and banks read that as a green light rather than a warning label. The stablecoin they're building is designed to be both GENIUS Act and MiCA compliant, aimed at interbank payments, digital asset settlement and eventually retail use. For banks that have spent years watching Tether and Circle run the dollar-token business without a banking charter in sight, that's the opening they'd been waiting for. And the market they're chasing is genuinely shifting under everyone's feet. Tether's USDT still commands roughly 60% of the stablecoin market, with Circle's USDC holding a bit more than 20%. But their combined grip has slipped from 91.6% in March 2024 to around 84% today, based on data referenced in recent Cointelegraph and industry reporting. That eight-point erosion in under two years is exactly the kind of crack a 21-bank consortium wants to drive a wedge into. A 140-company consortium including Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, BlackRock, and Coinbase launched Open USD on June 30, a stablecoin that returns reserve yield to partner businesses rather than keeping it, directly threatening Circle's core revenue model. Circle stock fell on the news as Coinbase, its own distribution partner, signed on as an OUSD... - stablecoin reserve profits competition - Visa Stripe Circle Tether rivalry Here's the part the banks probably didn't love discovering: they're now in a three-way fight, not a two-way one. On July 1, 2026, more than 140 companies, including Visa, Stripe, Mastercard, BlackRock, Coinbase, Ripple, Google, IBM, Shopify and Western Union, announced Open Standard and its stablecoin, Open USD. It charges zero fees to mint or redeem, carries no volume caps, and shares nearly all of its reserve yield with partner companies instead of keeping it, which is a direct shot at the business model Circle has run since its IPO. The market reaction told you everything. Circle's stock dropped somewhere between 17% and 19% on the Open USD announcement, according to reporting from Decrypt and the Stockopedia newswire, as investors priced in a rival that gives away the thing Circle charges for. If a coalition of payment networks and tech giants can do that kind of damage to Circle in one announcement, a 21-bank consortium with actual balance sheets and existing corporate relationships is a different order of threat entirely. Frankly, the real prize here isn't retail wallets. It's the plumbing underneath corporate treasury. According to analysis from McKinsey and Artemis Analytics, business-to-business stablecoin payments grew 733% year over year to an estimated $226 billion annually. Hyundai Motor and Hyundai Card ran what they called the first cross-border stablecoin settlement by a Korean card company on July 9, 2026, moving $20,000 in USDT from Hyundai Motor America to Hyundai Motor de México over Avalanche in about seven minutes. The same transfer through correspondent banking would have taken three to four hours. Settlement on stablecoin rails runs roughly 0.5% to 2.5% in total cost, against 3% to 7% for traditional correspondent banking, industry cost comparisons show. That gap is why a consortium of banks with trillions in corporate clients wants in, not because crypto traders need another coin to speculate with. None of this guarantees the bank consortium wins. It doesn't even have a name yet, and 2027 is still more than a year out. Open USD is already live in the market it's chasing. What's certain is that the stablecoin business has stopped being a crypto-native sideshow that traditional finance could afford to ignore. Goldman Sachs, Citi and nineteen other banks just decided they'd rather build the rails than keep paying tolls on someone else's. Twenty-one major banks, including Bank of America, Citi, Goldman Sachs and UBS, committed on September 1 to launch a joint dollar stablecoin company targeting a first-half 2027 launch. Circle's stock fell 6% on the news, its second institutional hit this quarter after Morgan Stanley slashed its price target 64% in August. - circle stock drops major banks stablecoin - banks launch rival to USDC stablecoin Join the discussion. No replies yet. Start the discussion. Dave Barr is a professional Marketing Strategist With Over 6 Years Of Experience in PR. His primary area of expertise is public relations and social branding. Dave has been associated with various content projects from across the world on a regular basis. He has also had associations with big and reputed news networks. Dave contributes to Startup Fortune in the Business, Marketing and Technology sections.

Wells Fargo launches mobile remittances to fend off fintech threat. The news: Wells Fargo is bringing its international money transfer service directly into the Wells Fargo app with ExpressSend Mobile, per a press release. Customers can send money to family and friends in 12 countries and track transfers in real time. Why it matters: Wells Fargo said it is the only major US bank with a dedicated mobile remittance service. However, remittances are a competitive industry, and it's getting more crowded. On top of incumbents like Western Union, Nubank launched Nu Global in September, a stablecoin account with free transfers across more than 35 countries. And Zelle plans to bring payments to India and other markets through its ZelleUSD stablecoin. Adding remittances to its mobile app gives Wells Fargo a potentially lucrative revenue stream in a large and growing industry. US remittance outflows are forecast to rise from $110.31 billion in 2026 to $116.46 billion in 2028, according to EMARKETER's forecast - a $6.5 billion increase. Read this with EMARKETER PRO+. Unlock unlimited insights with PRO+. You've read 0 of 2 free articles this month. Get more articles - create your free account today!

Western Union cuts could hit more than 1,000 jobs in Costa Rica. September 10, 2026 Western Union will gradually shrink its operations center in Costa Rica over the next 12 months and shift positions to Guatemala, Lithuania and the Philippines, the company confirmed on Wednesday. Local reports citing sources familiar with the plan say more than 1,000 jobs could be affected. Costa Rica videos. The Denver-based money transfer company said the changes follow a comprehensive review of its business. Western Union said the restructuring is intended to drive greater efficiency across its global financial network and to place support services where they best meet the needs of customers and agents. The company stressed that it will maintain an active presence in Costa Rica. Money sending and receiving services for customers and agents in Costa Rica will continue without interruption, Western Union said, as the reduction applies to its corporate operations center rather than the network of agent locations where customers send and collect funds. Western Union has not disclosed how many positions will be eliminated or relocated. Its Costa Rica careers page describes the site as employing more than 1,200 people representing 32 nationalities and 17 languages. Local business press figures put the workforce at 1,244, with a commitment by the company to maintain 1,100 positions. The Costa Rica operation serves as Western Union's regional operations center for Latin America and is based in Santa Ana, west of San José. It operates under the free trade zone regime, which exempts qualifying companies from income tax, and is registered locally as Unión del Oeste de Costa Rica S.R.L. In an internal communication sent to employees on Wednesday and signed by Ben Hawksworth, Western Union said it plans to move its regional support hub for the Americas to an operations center in Guatemala City. The message said the shift is meant to align the work done at each center with the region in which it is located. The company told staff that not all work will leave Costa Rica and that it is still evaluating which roles will remain. The transition will take place gradually, team by team, and Western Union expects much of it to be complete by mid-2027. During that period, employees in Costa Rica will work alongside colleagues in Guatemala City and other offices to hand over knowledge, procedures and best practices, according to the communication. Workers whose roles are affected will receive severance in line with legal requirements and company policy, along with human resources support and benefits guidance. Western Union acknowledged in the message that the prolonged lack of detail had created uncertainty among staff. The company attributed part of the delay to the drawn-out closing of its planned acquisition of Intermex, a U.S.-based remittance firm, which it said had slowed integration planning and decisions on where to locate operations. The message also recognized 28 years of contributions by the company's Costa Rica teams. The decision comes as Western Union accelerates cost cuts worldwide. Reporting second-quarter results on July 30, President and CEO Devin McGranahan said weaker-than-expected performance in the Americas retail business and the delayed Intermex deal had squeezed margins, requiring the company to "accelerate cost reductions more forcefully in the second half of the year." Quarterly revenue came in at $1 billion, down 1% from a year earlier, while adjusted earnings per share fell to $0.31 from $0.42. On the company's earnings call, McGranahan outlined a restructuring program called Beyond Efficiency, which targets $50 million in annualized savings by the end of 2026 and $200 million by the end of 2027. He cited the transfer of agent onboarding for the Asia-Pacific region from Lithuania and Costa Rica to the company's Manila operations center as one example of the approach. The $500 million Intermex acquisition, announced in August 2025 and initially expected to close in mid-2026, remains pending. In August, California's financial regulator suspended an approval extension for the deal to conduct further review, according to a joint statement from the two companies. The announcement follows other job reductions at multinational employers in Costa Rica this year, including Boston Scientific's confirmed layoffs and a new round of layoffs at Amazon. Western Union said it will share further details on which positions will move and which will stay as planning progresses. 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