Tether invests $20 million to acquire a stake in Argentina’s digital bank Ualá, continuing to expand its presence in South America

BlockBeats news, July 16: Tether, the world’s largest stablecoin issuer, took an investment of $20 million in Argentina’s digital bank Ualá. Ualá has more than 11 million customers in Argentina, Mexico, and Colombia, offering services including accounts, cards, loans, and investments. The investment forms part of Ualá’s $197 million funding round announced in March this year. The round was led by Allianz X, an Allianz unit, and the post-money valuation was $3.2 billion; based on this valuation, Tether’s stake is about 0.6%.

Ualá CEO Pierpaolo Barbieri said that existing regulatory requirements in Argentina and Mexico hinder the possibility of integrating USDT in the near term, and Tether participated in the round only as a financial investor.

Tether has recently continued to expand its presence in South America: in April, it led a $14 million funding round for Argentine payments wallet Belo; it holds about 70% equity in Adecoagro, an agricultural and energy producer operating in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay; and earlier this month it invested $20 million in Brazil’s crypto exchange Mercado Bitcoin. Tether makes investments by extracting excess capital from returns generated by USDT reserve assets. Currently, the circulating supply of USDT is $184 billion, and it reported net profit of $1.04 billion in the first quarter of this year.