Tether, Shiga plan self-custodial wallets for Africa and GCC

What happened

On September 28, stablecoin issuer Tether and Shiga, a digital finance provider with an existing focus on African markets, announced a partnership to launch self-custodial crypto wallets for users and institutions across Africa and the Gulf Cooperation Council. The collaboration builds on Tether's 2025 equity investment in Shiga Digital, and will use Tether's open-source Wallet Development Kit (WDK) as its core underlying infrastructure. Shiga will roll out two distinct products tailored to different user groups: ENTA for individual, high-net-worth and business users, and Pulse for banks and fintech firms building payment and treasury services for their own customers. ENTA users will be able to add funds via local currency, U.S. dollars or Bitcoin, then hold and transfer the supported digital assets from their self-custodial wallets, meaning they control their private keys rather than a third party. For institutional clients, Pulse offers a customizable platform that can be adapted to specific payment corridors, treasury operations and settlement flows, with the option to host the software either on Shiga's managed infrastructure or on the institution's own servers.

Why it matters

The offering targets regions where cross-border money movement carries high costs and limited access to traditional dollar-denominated banking services. World Bank data cited in the announcement shows the average cost of sending remittances to Sub-Saharan Africa hit 8.46% in the third quarter of 2025, the highest average among all receiving regions the organization tracks. Stablecoins like USD₮ can reduce some of the friction involved in moving dollar value across borders, particularly in areas where access to conventional dollar banking is restricted. By letting users hold crypto assets in self-custodial wallets, the partners aim to cut transfer costs while giving users full control of their funds, rather than relying on centralized custodians to hold assets on their behalf. The three-asset approach also gives customers access to a dollar-linked stablecoin, a decentralized volatile asset and tokenized gold within a single product suite.

Background

Tether has spent much of 2025 and 2026 expanding its Wallet Development Kit as infrastructure that other businesses can build on, rather than only offering its own branded products. The Shiga partnership is a concrete deployment of that strategy, as Tether is providing the underlying wallet components for a local financial firm to build tailored offerings for its target markets. Tether has previously collaborated with Opera on MiniPay, a separate self-custodial wallet serving markets including Africa, which added support for USD₮ and tokenized gold in February 2026.

What is still unclear

• Neither Tether nor Shiga have shared a launch timeline for either ENTA or Pulse, the list of countries where the products will first be available, or the fee structure customers will pay. No comparable cost estimate for transfers made through the new wallets has been provided by either company.

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