Tether (USDT) has made a strategic investment in Whop.com, a digital marketplace with 18.4 million users and roughly $3 billion in annual creator earnings.
The deal includes a technical integration of Tether's Wallet Development Kit into Whop's payment infrastructure.
The partnership, announced Feb. 25, will give Whop users the option to transact in USDT and USDA stablecoins. The investment amount was not disclosed.
Whop reported gross transaction volume growth of approximately 25% month over month, though no independent verification of that figure was provided.
What Happened
Under the agreement, Whop will integrate Tether's Wallet Development Kit - a self-custody infrastructure layer - directly into its platform.
The WDK is designed to let users hold and transfer funds without relying on third-party custodians, and to enable lending and borrowing through decentralized finance protocols.
Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether, framed the investment as part of a broader push to embed stablecoin infrastructure into "real economic activity" rather than speculative trading.
Tether currently claims more than 530 million users across its ecosystem and over $180 billion in issued digital dollars, making it the largest stablecoin issuer by market capitalization.
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Why It Matters
Whop operates as a marketplace for digital products - software, communities, and online services - with an international user base spanning Latin America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific.
For Tether, the deal extends its distribution into a segment of the internet economy where dollar-denominated settlement currently runs through traditional payment processors like Stripe or PayPal.
The integration targets a practical friction point: creators in markets with limited banking access or high payment processing fees. Stablecoin settlement theoretically reduces those costs, though real-world adoption rates for such integrations have historically been uneven.
Steven Schwartz, CEO and co-founder of Whop, said the partnership is aimed at enabling instant global payments for a creator base that is "global from day one."
The company plans to use the new funding to expand internationally and develop AI-driven tools for what it describes as "agentic income opportunities" - a category without an established track record.
The investment amount and Tether's resulting ownership stake in Whop were not disclosed in the announcement.
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