Tether Launches Consumer Wallet in Shift From B2B Stablecoin Provider

Tether on Tuesday unveiled tether.wallet, marking its first consumer-facing product after more than a decade operating primarily as settlement infrastructure for exchanges, protocols, and payment businesses.

The wallet lets users transfer funds using simple identifiers like name@tether.me instead of public wallet addresses, and fees are deducted in the asset being sent — removing two persistent friction points in blockchain-based payments.

The app is built on Tether's open-source Wallet Development Kit (WDK), which the company has offered to third-party developers. Tether says 570 million people already interact with its technology, largely indirectly through other platforms. The wallet brings that infrastructure under direct user control, with private keys and transaction signing handled locally on each device.

The launch puts Tether in direct competition with established wallet providers including MetaMask, Trust Wallet, and Exodus. Unlike those products, tether.wallet is centered on Tether's own stablecoin ecosystem rather than functioning as a multi-asset aggregator — at launch, supported assets are limited to USDT, USAT, XAUT (gold-backed), and bitcoin across Ethereum, Polygon, Plasma, Arbitrum, and the Lightning Network. Additional chains are planned.

CEO Paolo Ardoino framed the move as a natural evolution, not a pivot. "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 in a statement.