Tether partners with Shiga to launch self-custodial finance in Africa and GCC

Tether has made a strategic investment in Shiga Digital, an Abu Dhabi-headquartered fintech startup, to expand self-custodial digital asset products across Africa and the Gulf Cooperation Council region. The partnership will leverage Tether’s open-source Wallet Development Kit, or WDK, to build financial infrastructure that lets businesses and individuals in these markets hold and transact in USDT without relying on centralized custodians. What Shiga actually does Shiga Digital has been operating since 2016, offering a suite of financial services built for the specific headaches of pan-African commerce. Think virtual accounts, over-the-counter transactions, and treasury management tools designed around markets where a wire transfer can take days and cost a small fortune in fees. The company’s flagship product is the Enta wallet, a self-custodial solution that ditches the traditional seed phrase model in favor of passkeys and biometric authentication. The wallet supports USDT, Bitcoin, and tokenized gold. Shiga has processed over $350 million in transaction volumes since its founding. The company holds a DIFC Innovation License and works with licensed financial transmitters across m...