Tether’s USDT Hits 12.6M MiniPay Wallets as $153M Flows Power Emerging Markets Push

Key Takeaways:

• Tether has integrated USDT and gold-backed digital asset XAUt0 into MiniPay wallet of Opera on Celo blockchain.
• MiniPay currently has 12.6 million active wallets and processes over $153 million of transactions in single December 2025.
• The strong development in Africa, Latin America and South East Asia show that the increasing demand of users with crypto is evaluated by USD.

Tether is deepening its footprint in emerging markets by expanding USDT and Tether Gold access through Opera’s MiniPay wallet. The move targets mobile-first regions where access to stable value remains limited, but smartphone usage is already widespread.

It can now take nearly no hassle to store, send and receive both USDT and XAUt0 in the self-custodial wallet, Minipay, a product of the Opera application that runs on Celo. USDT, the largest dollar-peg stablecoin, with the largest following at 186 billion, is the most popular dollar-peg in existence, so adding it to MiniPay would make it more of a real payments center as opposed to a spec-chip.

The numbers underline that shift. MiniPay has reached 12.6 million activated wallets and processed more than 350 million transactions overall. On-chain data estimates 3.64 million active users on Celo, showing that usage goes beyond simple wallet installs.

In the fourth quarter of 2025, MiniPay recorded 50% growth in on-chain users, reflecting accelerating adoption across Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. These are the areas that continue to have recourse to stablecoins in order to avoid the unstable currency swings and high fees of the middlemen.

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MiniPay counted 7M phone-verified wallets of USDT as of December 2025. Approximately 300,000 individuals purchased USDT in that month, which is an increase of 33% compared to the previous month.

Celo became the fastest-growing native USDT network over the past year, expanding from roughly 825,000 users to 5 million, a 506% increase. In December alone, MiniPay users initiated more than 96 million USDT in stablecoin transfers and completed over 3.5 million peer-to-peer payments.

Liquidity inflows also climbed. Users added more than $49 million in cash to MiniPay through local partners such as Fonbank, Partna, Daimo, Cashramp, Binance, and Bybit. Within the board, MiniPay transversed more than $153 million in December which demonstrates that it is indeed a bridge between local markets and global crypto flow.

Read More: Tether Posts $10B+ Profit as USDT Supply Hits $186B and U.S. Treasury Exposure Tops $141B

In addition to dollar stability, the users of XAUt0, which is the bridged form of Tether Gold, get access to gold-based value to use with MiniPay. It will be a strong alternative store of value in 2025 when gold prices are virtually 50% higher, allowing anyone who would be protecting against the inflation to keep their assets on-chain.

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