The tether.wallet is designed to bring the company’s infrastructure directly into the hands of its users, Tether said in a Tuesday (April 14) news release.
The release said that while Tether’s technology is used by more than 570 million people, it has until now functioned “purely as the underlying layer” of the digital asset economy, allowing for liquidity, settlement and payments across more than 160 countries.
“With tether.wallet, that entire infrastructure, the widest and most granular money distribution network built by humanity, becomes directly accessible to end users for the first time,” the company said in the release.
Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said the wallet is part of the company’s goals of promoting the wider adoption of digital assets.
“Users should be able to send value as easily as sending a message, without relying on intermediaries and without giving up control of their assets,” he said. “tether.wallet is ‘the People’s Wallet’ because it truly reflects the natural evolution of Tether’s role, from building the foundation of the digital asset economy to making it directly usable by anyone, ready for a future in which tens of billions of humans, machines, and trillions of AI agents will transact seamlessly at the speed of light.”
PYMNTS wrote last month about the growing strategic importance of crypto wallets as they take on more responsibility.
“Control over the wallet layer translates into control over user relationships, transaction data, and, ultimately, market share,” that report said. “In a digital environment, money is not just a unit of account or store of value; it is an experience mediated by software.”
For businesses, this has serious implications. Investing in stablecoins is no longer simply about choosing the right issuer or asset, but about understanding the entire stack, from regulation to user interface, and determining where value is created.
“In this new landscape, wallets are not ancillary components,” the report added. “They are the connective tissue that links policy, technology and behavior. As stablecoins move into the mainstream, the question is no longer whether they can achieve stability. It is whether the wallet layer can deliver it in a way that users trust.”
Meanwhile, recent PYMNTS Intelligence research finds that consumers are increasingly turning to digital wallets as a payment method.
The data shows that 28% of high-stress consumers used a digital wallet for their last retail purchase, compared to 11% of low-stress consumers. The study also found that 36% of Gen Z consumers used a digital wallet for their most recent retail purchase in November of last year, up from 15% in March 2024.