tether.io
9 December 2025 – Tether, the largest company in the digital asset industry, and HoneyCoin, one of the fastest-growing African fintech platforms on a mission to build the operating system for money movement in frontier markets, are announcing a strategic collaboration aimed at accelerating access to digital assets across Africa.
HoneyCoin provides innovative solutions for cost-effective storage, transfer, and exchange of value globally. By leveraging blockchain technology and traditional financial infrastructure, the company is addressing long-standing challenges in cross-border transactions, such as high costs, delays, and inefficiencies.
As part of this collaboration, HoneyCoin will launch a cashless point-of-sale (POS) platform with USD₮ payments, enabling merchants to accept stablecoins directly at checkout. This development expands payment options for shoppers while helping merchants increase sales and customer convenience. Additionally, HoneyCoin will integrate USD₮ into its growing ecosystem, enabling merchants to make online and in-person payments across Africa and globally at lower costs, thereby facilitating trade and payments.
In many African economies, currency volatility, inflation, and limited access to banking are daily realities. Stablecoins offer a powerful alternative to this challenge. This collaboration will also introduce in-store stablecoin payments across Kenya, enabling merchants to conduct international transactions with price certainty and little friction while leveraging dollar-backed digital assets.
By integrating USD₮ into everyday commerce, merchants can preserve value, achieve faster settlement, and significantly reduce transaction fees, shielding savings from currency devaluation and inflation. The initiative will also develop robust infrastructure for QR code payments, real-time FX conversion from Kenyan Shillings (KES) to USD₮, and merchant dashboards on the platform, further advancing the use of digital assets in Africa’s evolving payment ecosystem.
Cryptocurrency usage patterns in Africa reveal widespread adoption and a rapidly growing role in everyday financial activity. Between July 2024 and June 2025, the region received over $205 billion in on-chain value, up roughly 52% from the previous year, making it the third fastest-growing region in the world. Crypto usage trends in Sub-Saharan Africa are closely linked with the region’s ongoing financial inclusion challenges. Despite significant progress in recent years, many adults in Sub-Saharan Africa remain unbanked or underbanked, creating fertile ground for alternative financial technologies such as cryptocurrencies.
“With the rapidly growing digital assets ecosystem in Sub-Saharan Africa, it’s clear that more people are gravitating toward alternative financial solutions to facilitate easy cross-border transactions and access to foreign currency without the complexities of owning or maintaining a foreign bank account. Our mission is to ensure true financial inclusion for everyone. We want individuals anywhere to participate freely in the global digital economy without restrictions, and we are excited to work with innovative companies like HoneyCoin to make this a reality,” said Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether.
“This collaboration marks a pivotal moment not just for HoneyCoin, but for the future of payments in Africa,” said David Makuku Nandwa, CEO of HoneyCoin. “Our work at HoneyCoin centers on solving two fundamental challenges: making sure businesses can accept every form of payment their customers want to use, and providing them with sophisticated tools to strengthen and scale their financial operations,” said David Makuku Nandwa. “We’re bringing the same simplicity that mobile money offers to stablecoin acceptance, while giving African entrepreneurs access to the currency stability and global connectivity that digital dollars enable.”
Tether has previously supported projects across Africa that address real-world problems and make global finance accessible to everyone. This includes investing in Kotani Pay to revolutionize Africa’s Digital Asset Infrastructure and Cross-Border Payments, signing an MoU with Zanzibar eGovernment Authority (eGAZ), and signing an MoU to Advance Digital Asset Education and Blockchain Adoption, and investing in Shiga Digital to Strengthen Africa’s On-Chain Financial Ecosystem, further solidifying Tether’s position as a global leader in promoting financial freedom.