TL;DR
- Tether and Shiga are launching self-custodial financial products across Africa and the Gulf Cooperation Council.
- The products will use Tether’s Wallet Development Kit and support USDT, Bitcoin and Tether Gold.
- Shiga is building one product for end users and another infrastructure layer for banks and fintech companies.
Tether is moving its Wallet Development Kit from developer tooling into financial products aimed at users and institutions across Africa and the Gulf.
The company announced a collaboration with Shiga on September 28 to build self-custodial services supporting USDT, Bitcoin and Tether Gold.
The initiative follows Tether’s strategic investment in Shiga in 2025.
One Product Is For Users, Another Is For Banks
The collaboration centers on two products.
ENTA is designed for individuals, high-net-worth users and businesses.
Users will be able to fund self-custodial wallets using local currency, U.S. dollars or Bitcoin, then hold and transfer assets including USDT, BTC and XAUT.
Pulse is aimed at institutions.
Banks and fintech companies will be able to use it to build digital-asset services around specific payment corridors, treasury operations and settlement flows.
Both products use Tether’s open-source Wallet Development Kit, or WDK, underneath.
The self-custody element is important.
Users or institutions retain control of their keys and assets rather than relying on a centralized wallet provider to hold funds on their behalf.
Institutional customers can either use infrastructure managed by Shiga or deploy the technology inside their own environment.
Remittances Are A Major Target
Africa is an obvious market for this kind of infrastructure.
Tether cited World Bank data showing the average cost of sending remittances to Sub-Saharan Africa reached 8.46% in 2025.
Stablecoins can potentially reduce some of the friction involved in moving dollar-denominated value across borders, particularly where access to conventional dollar banking is limited.
That does not remove the regulatory layer.
Shiga says it is completing the final stage of approval for a Digital Asset Intermediary licence in Nigeria.
The licence has not yet been granted.
If approved, it would allow the company to provide regulated dealing, broking and custody services there.
The partnership is also broader than USDT.
Including Bitcoin and XAUT gives users access to three very different types of digital asset: a dollar stablecoin, a volatile decentralized asset and tokenized gold.
Tether has spent much of the year expanding WDK as infrastructure that other businesses can build on.
Shiga gives that strategy a concrete deployment.
Instead of asking users to download a Tether-branded wallet, Tether is providing the components for local companies and financial institutions to build their own.
This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.
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