For years, many Africans have faced a major challenge: access to affordable, borderless financial services. In response to that challenge, Tether has announced an investment in Kotani Pay, a Kenyan technology company that is building tools to connect blockchain-based payments directly to mobile money systems used across Africa.
Kotani Pay has been quietly building solutions that make crypto practical. Instead of complex wallets or confusing exchanges, the platform allows users to send and receive digital currency through mobile channels like M-Pesa and Airtel Money. This is a major step because mobile money is already a daily part of life for millions of Africans. What Kotani Pay does is merge that familiar experience with the flexibility of blockchain, allowing people to hold, send, and receive stablecoins like USDT directly through a simple interface.
Tether’s investment signals more than just business expansion. It’s a statement that the African market deserves real infrastructure, not just attention. According to Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino, the goal is to enable people in emerging markets to participate fully in the digital economy without needing traditional banks. The company sees Africa as a key frontier where blockchain can be used to solve everyday financial problems, remittances, cross-border payments, savings, and even payroll.
For context, African countries collectively process billions of dollars in remittances each year, but transaction fees often eat into those funds. Traditional systems charge between 5% and 10% per transfer, while blockchain networks using stablecoins can cut that to less than 1%. Kotani Pay bridges that efficiency gap by building local integrations that make blockchain payments compatible with existing financial habits.
The partnership also aligns with a broader wave of crypto infrastructure growth across the continent. From Nigeria’s blockchain startups to South Africa’s payment systems, the race to make blockchain truly accessible is accelerating. Tether’s move positions it as a serious participant in this ecosystem rather than an outsider.
By supporting Kotani Pay, Tether is helping to build a financial bridge that could eventually allow any African with a phone number to access global payments in seconds. That is the real meaning of financial inclusion, and this time, it’s being built from the ground up in Africa.Â
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