Tether and Shiga bring self-custodial digital assets to Africa and the Gulf

Tether and Shiga announced on September 28, 2026, that they are teaming up to bring self-custodial digital assets to individuals, businesses and financial institutions across Africa and the Gulf Cooperation Council. The plan centers on two new products, ENTA and Pulse, both built on Tether’s open-source Wallet Development Kit and designed to hold USDT, Bitcoin and Tether Gold without handing control of those funds to a centralized custodian.

Key takeaways

• Tether and Shiga announced a collaboration on September 28, 2026, to launch self-custodial financial products across Africa and the GCC.
• The products, ENTA and Pulse, run on Tether’s Wallet Development Kit and support USDT, Bitcoin and Tether Gold (XAUT).
• ENTA targets individuals, high-net-worth users and businesses; Pulse targets banks and fintech companies building payment, treasury and settlement services.
• According to Shiga, the company is currently completing the last step needed to secure a Digital Asset Intermediary licence in Nigeria, a permit that remains ungranted so far.
• According to the World Bank, remittance costs to Sub-Saharan Africa averaged 8.46% during the third quarter of 2025, making it the most expensive region among those the institution monitors.

Tether and Shiga Launch Self-Custodial Digital Asset Products

Tether and Shiga are moving from tooling to consumer- and institution-facing products, extending a relationship that started with Tether’s investment in Shiga in June 2025. That earlier deal gave Shiga backing to expand services already covering virtual accounts, foreign exchange, treasury management and over-the-counter transactions for businesses across Africa.

Partnership Overview and Product Scope

The new collaboration is built around the Tether Wallet Development Kit, an open-source toolkit for building self-custodial wallets. Both ENTA and Pulse run on this infrastructure, and Tether says a single integration will let Shiga support the blockchain networks available through the kit. The products are designed to hold three very different types of digital asset: USDT as a dollar-linked stablecoin, Bitcoin as a volatile decentralized asset, and Tether Gold as a tokenized commodity.

Tether has not announced a launch date, named the specific countries where ENTA will first roll out, or disclosed what fees customers would pay to use it. Paolo Ardoino, Tether’s chief executive, said the toolkit is meant to let companies build products where users keep control of their own assets. “Together with Shiga, we are bringing that infrastructure to markets where people and businesses face real challenges protecting savings and moving money across borders,” Ardoino said.

Self-Custody as Central Feature

The defining feature of both products is that users and institutions keep control of their own private keys instead of trusting a centralized wallet provider to hold funds on their behalf. That distinction matters in markets where confidence in financial intermediaries can be uneven, and it puts the responsibility for securing assets directly on the account holder rather than on Tether or Shiga.

For institutional clients, Shiga is offering flexibility on where that infrastructure actually runs. Businesses can rely on Shiga-managed systems or deploy the wallet software inside their own environment, an option aimed at clients with specific rules about where their data is stored and who controls the systems used to sign transactions.

Product Segmentation: ENTA for Users and Pulse for Institutions

Shiga split the rollout into two distinct products rather than offering one wallet for every type of customer. That separation reflects how differently individual users and financial institutions need to interact with digital assets.

ENTA: Features for Individuals, High-Net-Worth Users, and Businesses

ENTA is aimed at individuals, high-net-worth users and businesses. Local currency, US dollars or Bitcoin can all be used by customers to fund their self-custodial wallets, after which USDT, BTC and XAUT can be held and transferred from that same account. Nowhere in Tether’s announcement is it stated that ENTA itself will keep local currency as a wallet balance; instead, the funding options seem intended to provide users a route into the supported digital assets rather than to store local currency as an asset.

Pulse: Infrastructure for Banks and Fintech Companies

Pulse is built for banks and fintech companies that want to construct their own digital-asset services rather than adopt a fixed product. Shiga chief executive Abiola Shogbeni said the company intends to tailor Pulse to each institution’s operations instead of supplying identical wallet interfaces to every client. The platform is meant to support specific payment corridors, treasury operations and settlement flows, though Tether has not named a bank or fintech partner that has committed to deploying it, nor identified an initial corridor or expected transaction volume.

Shiga chief operating officer Dami Etomi said the company will run ENTA on the same platform it offers institutional clients through Pulse, meaning prospective Pulse customers would be able to see a live Shiga product using the underlying infrastructure before committing to their own build.

Strategic and Regulatory Context

The push into Africa and the Gulf is not happening in a vacuum. Remittance costs in the region remain some of the highest in the world, and stablecoins have increasingly been floated as a way to cut that cost — though the effectiveness of that approach in practice is not something Tether or Shiga have quantified for these specific products.

Targeting High Remittance Costs in Africa

Tether cites World Bank data showing that remittance costs to Sub-Saharan Africa averaged 8.46% in the third quarter of 2025, the highest figure recorded among all receiving regions tracked by the institution. This statistic helps explain why blockchain-focused companies are increasingly targeting cross-border payment corridors within the region. Stablecoins offer the possibility of easing some of the difficulties tied to transferring dollar-denominated value internationally, especially in areas where traditional dollar banking access is scarce. Neither Tether nor Shiga has published a comparable cost estimate for transfers made through ENTA or Pulse, so it remains to be seen how much of that gap the new products can actually close.

Regulatory Status in Nigeria

Regulatory approval is still pending in at least one key market. According to Etomi, Shiga is currently in the process of finalizing its application for a Digital Asset Intermediary licence in Nigeria, though the credential has not yet been issued. Once granted, this licence would permit Shiga to offer regulated dealing, broking and custody services for digital assets to both individuals and institutions across the country, establishing a formal regulatory basis for the ENTA and Pulse rollout in one of Africa’s most significant crypto markets.

The move also sits alongside other Tether-linked efforts to expand self-custodial access on the continent. Tether has separately worked with Opera on the MiniPay wallet, which added support for USDT and Tether Gold earlier this year. Taken together, these efforts suggest Tether is less interested in shipping its own branded wallet app and more focused on supplying the underlying components that let local companies and financial institutions build products suited to their own markets and regulatory environments.

Article produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence and reviewed by the editorial team.