Tether Joins Forces with Shiga Digital to Drive African Crypto Adoption

• Tether has invested in Shiga Digital, a platform bringing easy-to-use blockchain-based financial tools to businesses and communities across Africa.
• The move reflects Tether’s belief that stablecoins can play a key role in providing financial services to people who’ve long been excluded from the traditional banking system.

Tether, the company behind the USDT stablecoin, is growing its presence in Africa with partnerships and educational efforts. This is just a means to boost financial inclusion and encourage the use of blockchain technology. On June 5, Tether announced it has invested in Shiga Digital, a startup based in Abu Dhabi with fewer than 10 employees, focused on building blockchain-powered financial tools for the African market.

They will help businesses across Africa simplify cross-border payments, handle currency exchanges, open virtual accounts, and manage treasury operations, all powered by USDT. The goal? To move past the inefficiencies of traditional banking and offer faster, more dependable financial services to key industries like oil, gas, and agriculture. Both companies are driven by a shared belief: financial freedom should be a universal right, not a privilege.

“At Tether, we see stablecoins as the driving force behind the future of finance,” said Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether.

By teaming up with forward-thinking companies like Shiga Digital, we want to bring greater financial access and efficiency to businesses across Africa. Together, we’re not just imagining what blockchain can do, we’re making it a reality.

Abiola Shogbeni, CEO of Shiga Digital, added, “We believe the future of money is decentralized. We envision a world where Bitcoin could become the default global currency, while local currencies continue to serve their role in everyday exchanges. As the financial landscape evolves, internet-native money will play a bigger part, and stablecoins, especially those backed by assets like the U.S. dollar, will be key to everyday transactions and a reliable part of people’s financial portfolios.”

Expanding USDT Access

The issuer has made another move. Crypto News Flash recently reported that Tether has made an investment in Orionx. This is a digital asset platform based in Chile that’s now expanding into Peru, Colombia, and Mexico. The goal isn’t just to grow the business; it’s also about making stablecoins more accessible to communities that the financial system has traditionally underserved.

Meanwhile, Tether is making strides in digital assets as well with Tether Gold (XAUT), a token designed to bring the age-old appeal of gold into the modern, digital economy. As previously reported by Crypto News Flash, Tether launched XAUT in Thailand through the Maxbit platform, giving users in the region a new, more flexible way to invest in gold. The key attraction? XAUT will let you buy, sell, and trade gold 24/7, without the traditional headaches of physically storing or securing the precious metal.

But the innovation doesn’t stop there. Just a few days ago, on June 2, Tether took this concept even further by introducing XAUT₀, an omnichain version of its gold-backed stablecoin. Built on the USDT₀ liquidity network, XAUT₀ is now fully live on the TON blockchain, one of the fastest-growing ecosystems in the crypto space.

What sets XAUT₀ apart is its ability to move effortlessly between different blockchains. Traditionally, sending tokens across chains required complex processes like “wrapping”, a technical workaround that often adds fees, delays, and risk.