Table Of Content
Key Takeaways:
- Busha Business has partnered with Tether to expand regulated stablecoin infrastructure for African businesses.
- The collaboration focuses on enterprise payments, treasury management, and cross-border settlements rather than retail crypto trading.
- The announcement reflects a broader shift across Africa, where fintechs are increasingly positioning stablecoins as financial infrastructure instead of speculative assets.
Busha Business, the B2B infrastructure arm of Nigerian crypto exchange Busha, has announced a partnership with Tether, issuer of USD₮. The focus of the partnership is to expand licensed stablecoin infrastructure for African businesses.
Busha and Tether Deepen Stablecoin Partnership
Busha Business, which operates in Nigeria and Kenya, is built on Busha’s SEC-licensed foundation. It offers cross-border payments, stablecoin treasury management, business savings, merchant payment tools, and API infrastructure for other fintechs and developers. The Tether partnership expands on that by giving Busha Business clients access to globally connected USD₮ liquidity.
Busha co-founder and COO Moyo Sodipo framed the announcement around speed and infrastructure rather than crypto novelty, saying “businesses need financial infrastructure that moves at the speed of modern commerce.”
He also highlighted the opportunities this opens for businesses.
Through our collaboration with Tether, we are giving businesses access to globally connected liquidity on licensed infrastructure designed for faster payments, stronger treasury management, and more efficient international trade.
A move, he claims, is “another step toward building the financial rails that African businesses need to compete globally.”
Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino also pointed to the persistent cost and slowness of cross-border transactions in emerging markets as the problem the partnership is meant to close.
“Cross-border transactions are still slow and expensive for the businesses and individuals who depend on them, especially in emerging markets, and closing that gap requires collaboration between companies committed to solving it,” he said.
This announcement comes a few months after the Africa Tech Summit in Nairobi, where Busha’s COO, Moyo Sodipo, called for more African-relevant stablecoin infrastructure to reduce reliance on payment systems built for other markets.
The Africa Tech Summit appearance was shortly followed by an exclusive mixer called “After The Summit” hosted by Busha in partnership with Tether.
Africa’s Stablecoin Race Is Moving Up the Stack
Over the past two years, Africa’s crypto companies have largely stopped competing as exchanges and started competing to become financial infrastructure providers.
Flutterwave integrated USDC settlement through its Circle partnership. Yellow Card has pivoted hard toward institutional infrastructure, adding Visa and Mastercard as platform partners. Opera’s MiniPay has pushed stablecoins into everyday consumer payments. Visa has built out its own stablecoin platform and pilots across the continent.
In May 2026, Busha itself launched a crypto-backed payment card that enables its retail users to spend stablecoins and other digital assets straight from their wallets.
Busha’s move with Tether fits squarely into that pattern.
Why Tether Is Increasingly Focusing on Africa
Stablecoin usage in Africa has grown. Yellow Card reported that stablecoins accounted for 43% of total cryptocurrency transaction volume in sub-Saharan Africa in 2024. Nigeria, one of the markets where Busha Business operates, accounts for 60% of Sub-Saharan Africa’s stablecoin inflow since 2019. It also recorded an estimated $22 billion in transactions between July 2023 and June 2024.
USDT, Tether’s stablecoin, dominates this large stablecoin market. With 59% of its crypto users holding USDT, Nigeria leads the world in USDT ownership. USDT also dominates roughly 60% of P2P trading volume in sub-Saharan Africa. This translates to roughly $3.6 billion in monthly transactions across Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa alone.
This large market share exists because Africa offers Tether a structurally favourable environment for USDT’s business case. Expensive cross-border payment costs, high currency volatility, and chronic dollar-access shortages are all problems on the continent that its stablecoin can address. The continent’s fast-growing base of B2B trade increasingly prefers dollar-denominated settlement that occurs without the hassle of correspondent banking.
USDT has held its lead in international settlement volume largely on liquidity depth and first-mover distribution. It’s the stablecoin most exchanges, OTC desks, and payment corridors already support. USDC and newer entrants like Open USD compete for the same institutional customers on regulatory clarity and banking-grade compliance features.
What This Means for African Businesses
For SMEs, the practical upside is improved trade. Faster and cheaper settlement with stablecoins means faster supplier payments, fewer banking delays, and lower remittance costs. It also reduces the barrier to entry and makes it easier to participate in markets that used to require a dollar account they couldn’t easily open.
For banks and fintechs, partnerships like this raise the competitive stakes. With global institutions like Visa integrating and developing stablecoin infrastructure, there’s a chance that institutions that don’t follow suit risk losing corporate payment flows to companies that do.
For regulators, growing enterprise stablecoin usage is likely to shift the conversation further toward licensing frameworks, AML compliance, treasury reporting standards, and institutional custody rules.
Africa’s Financial Infrastructure Is Becoming Blockchain-Native
None of these point toward stablecoins replacing banks. They point toward stablecoin rails being layered underneath the financial services Africa’s businesses already use. It shows how they’re quietly handling the settlement leg that used to take days and cost a meaningful percentage of the transaction.
Busha’s partnership with Tether is one more data point in that shift. Crypto firms are repositioning themselves as payment infrastructure providers rather than exchanges.
The companies that come out ahead over the next few years are unlikely to be the ones with the most trading volume. They’ll be the ones that become quietly indispensable to how African commerce actually moves money.
