Inside Stripe's Open Standard

**Alex Johnson** (0:00)
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Hello, and welcome back to the Fintech Takes podcast. Today's episode is stablecoin themed. I have been wanting to have today's guest, James Wester, a longtime payment analyst and current analyst at Javelin, come back on the podcast for a while. He's been on before. I kind of think of him as my stablecoin correspondent, so to speak, because he is both knowledgeable about stablecoins, bullish on the future of stablecoins and crypto broadly as a payment technology, while also being extraordinarily knowledgeable about how non-crypto payments works, the history of how the payments industry has evolved, the factors that drove that evolution and why they're important to learn from. And all of that is very relevant as a collision of different types of expertise, because our topic today is Open Standard and the OUSD stablecoin that will at some point be launched by Open Standard. This of course is the group consortium, non-profit, we're not exactly sure what, organized by Stripe to issue a dollar-backed payment stablecoin that will functionally end up being a major competitor to USDC and Circle. James and I talk all about what we know, what we don't know, what we suspect might be true, the challenges we think that Open Standard and OUSD will face, and really what lessons we can draw from the history of payments and consortiums in payments to help us understand where all of this might be going. Fascinating conversation. James, as you'll hear, is incredibly knowledgeable about all of these subjects. He's also just a ton of fun to bounce theories off of, an analyst in the truest sense of the word and someone I've learned from for years. So without further ado, here is my conversation with James Wester.
This is Fintech Takes, the podcast keeping you in the loop on all the latest Fintech trends, news and ideas. I'm Alex Johnson, creator of the Fintech Takes newsletter, your host and self-confessed Fintech nerd.
Okay. Delighted once again to have our skeptical stablecoin correspondent James Wester join the podcast. James, good to see you.

**James Wester** (2:54)
I see you. I'm glad I caused delight when I appear.

**Alex Johnson** (2:57)
You absolutely do. In fact, so much so that I will tell you something. You are the hardest person to get on the Fintech Takes podcast, bar none. Like you get the award for, I have to chase you more to come on the podcast than any other person. And I get it. Like lots of stuff happening in stable coins. You're like a naturally charming and just like gregarious person that people want as much time.

**James Wester** (3:20)
Now you're just burying me up at this point. I will come on anytime somebody says that I am delightful and gregarious.

**Alex Johnson** (3:27)
Well, there you go. You can clip that for your family so that at least someone has said that about it'll go on my bio, my LinkedIn bio.

**James Wester** (3:36)
It was once called delightful and gregarious.

**Alex Johnson** (3:39)
Yeah, that's right. That's right. That is what you are known for, at least around here.
I am delighted to have you back. It feels like every time enough, like things happen in stable coin world that I'm just like, I have questions about this. I have questions about this. I have questions about this. I think I have to have James come on. So a bunch of different topics. I wanted to start with one that we might not even ever get away from for the entire course of this conversation because there's lots of angles to it, which is Open Standard, the new, I don't know what word we're using, consortium?

**James Wester** (4:14)
So that's part of the discussion.

**Alex Johnson** (4:17)
Yeah, like I don't even-

**James Wester** (4:18)
What do we call this?

**Alex Johnson** (4:19)
Right, like so maybe let's start at the most elemental level, like James, what is this? What are they doing? What's happening? What is this?

**James Wester** (4:27)
I feel like I'm gonna fail right out of the gate because I'm not gonna have a good answer.
And the reason is because I think it's, I've been burned a lot. I've been doing this a long time and I can tell you the numbers of consortia, partnerships, membership organizations, whatever it is that I looked at and I thought, oh, that's a good idea. So early in my career, I thought ISIS was a good idea, which I mean, I mean, the contact.