Tether leads pre-seed round of Peso, the Bolivian app that lets users pay for food in USDT, but keeps the amount secret

Tether led the pre-seed funding round of Peso, a Bolivian fintech that lets people hold, spend and send USDT from one app, the stablecoin issuer said on Wednesday 21 October 2026. Tether’s announcement gives no amount, no valuation and no list of other investors. The money is meant to expand Peso’s on- and off-ramps in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia and Argentina, and to grow its network of merchant payment terminals.

A pre-seed round is the earliest stage of venture funding, and the cheque is usually small. What makes the deal worth a look is the country. Bolivia banned crypto trading until June 2024, ended a dollar peg of almost 15 years in June 2026 and is now weighing whether USDT should sit next to the boliviano and the US dollar in its payment system. Peso is betting that people who already save in USDT will want to spend it on dinner too.

“Peso is building the kind of everyday-spend infrastructure that turns USD₮ from a savings tool into a payments channel people rely on daily,” Tether chief executive Paolo Ardoino said in the release. Alejandro Terán, Peso’s chief executive and co-founder, put the problem in plainer terms: “Latin Americans are already using USD₮; what was missing was the infrastructure to spend it in everyday life without friction.”

What Peso does: USDT accounts, food delivery and Bolivian bank rails

According to Tether’s release, Peso offers a dollar account denominated in USDT that users can save in, spend from, invest with and use to send money abroad. On top of that sit three products aimed at daily life.

The first is a payment link inside other apps. Peso started with Yango, a digital services platform operating in Bolivia, where users can now order food and pay in USDT without leaving the app. Crypto Briefing reported the Yango Food integration on 14 August 2026, describing users in Bolivia, Santa Cruz included, who order meals and settle the bill through the Peso app, with no need for a traditional bank account.

The second is point-of-sale acceptance for shops. The third is the piece that matters most for a country where dollars are hard to get: virtual accounts in the user’s own name that connect USDT to the Bolivian banking system through QR payments and ACH transfers. In practice, that lets a user move between the stablecoin and bolivianos held at local banks.

Terán framed the deal as a vote of confidence in local engineers. “That a company like Tether chose a Bolivian startup for this investment is a recognition of the talent and execution capacity that exists here,” he said in the release.

Tether, Peso and Bolivia: a pre-seed round with four markets and no figures

The release names Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia and Argentina as Peso’s “active markets”. It does not say how many users Peso has in each, what share of its activity comes from outside Bolivia, or when the expansion of on- and off-ramps will be finished. Cointelegraph, which reported the deal on the same day, also found no amount, and neither names a co-investor.

Tether describes USDT in the release as “the settlement layer connecting local currencies” in those markets. That is the business logic. A user in La Paz and a merchant in São Paulo may never touch each other’s currency; both can touch USDT. Ardoino added that “by supporting Peso’s growth across the region, we aim to create a new standard for stablecoin-powered solutions.”

Missing too is any word on licences. Tether’s text does not say under which Bolivian authorisation Peso runs its virtual accounts, or whether it holds licences in Brazil, Colombia or Argentina, where crypto payment firms face separate rules.

Why Bolivia: the 6.96 peg ends and dollars run short

From November 2011 the boliviano was fixed at 6.96 to the dollar. As the central bank’s foreign currency ran low, dollars became hard to find at that price, and a parallel rate opened up well above the official one. On Friday 26 June 2026 the economy ministry and the Banco Central de Bolivia (BCB) approved a flexible rate, and from Monday 29 June the official rate started at Bs 9.73 per dollar, Correo del Sur reported. The BCB now sets it each day as the weighted average of dollar purchases made by banks from their clients.

Prices had already moved. Consumer prices rose 20.4% over 2025, the highest yearly inflation in 36 years, the National Institute of Statistics (INE) reported in January, according to Correo del Sur. Cointelegraph’s report on the Peso deal links the turn to stablecoins since 2025 to a long dollar shortage and high inflation, and notes that some businesses now accept USDT for purchases.

The International Monetary Fund stepped in during the summer. On 29 July 2026 IMF staff reached an agreement with Bolivia on a 36-month Extended Fund Facility of about $1.9 billion, subject to board approval and prior actions, with a stated aim to “move toward a more flexible exchange rate regime.” The Rio Times and other outlets, citing the Fund, reported that the IMF board approved the programme on 2 October, releasing about $214 million at once.

USDT payments in Bolivia: from a crypto ban to a state bank’s wallet

Bolivia’s path to USDT is short and recent. A 2020 central bank resolution, 144/2020, barred the trading of crypto assets. On 26 June 2024 the BCB said it had repealed that rule through resolution 082/2024, allowing electronic payment channels to be used to buy and sell virtual assets, Correo del Sur reported. The bank kept one line clear. Its president, Edwin Rojas, said a virtual asset is not legal tender; the boliviano is.

Banks moved within months. Banco Bisa launched a USDT custody service in October 2024, letting clients buy, sell and transfer the stablecoin; Cointelegraph reported that the head of the regulator ASFI supported the offering, and Decrypt later confirmed the launch. In September 2025 dealers for Toyota, Yamaha and BYD in Bolivia started taking USDT, Cointelegraph reported at the time.

Then the government joined in. In November 2025 Economy Minister José Gabriel Espinoza announced a plan to bring crypto and stablecoins into the formal financial system, with banks allowed to hold crypto for clients and offer crypto-linked products, Cointelegraph recalled in its Peso report. No implementing rules have been found since.

In April 2026 two more banks added USDT, according to the Latin American crypto outlet CriptoNoticias, the only source Coindaro found for these details. It reported that Banco FIE opened a crypto account for buying and selling USDT on 9 April, capped at 2,000 USDT in custody, and that the state-owned Banco Unión added USDT to its Yasta wallet from 30 April, through the Salvadoran platform EFY Finance, with a daily limit of Bs 8,250.

In July the question reached the payment system itself. At a briefing on 10 July 2026, Decrypt reported, Espinoza said the government was weighing USDT as a form of payment and that “these crypto assets must be carefully evaluated.” He also pointed out that Bolivia sits on the FATF grey list of countries under increased monitoring for money laundering controls. Decrypt cited Chainalysis data putting Bolivia’s crypto transaction volume at $14.8 billion between July 2024 and June 2025, eighth in Latin America.

No rule recognising USDT as a payment currency had been published by the time of the Peso announcement, and none of the sources consulted for this piece describe one. The framework is still being studied.

What Tether is buying across Latin America

Peso is the earliest-stage company in a string of Tether bets in the region this year. In April 2026 Tether led a $14 million Series A in Belo, an Argentine wallet, Forbes Argentina reported on 29 April; Brazil was named as Belo’s first big market, with Peru and Bolivia on its radar. On 15 July 2026 Argentine neobank Ualá said Tether had put $20 million into its $197 million round, which was led by Allianz X and valued Ualá at $3.2 billion after the money. Ualá’s chief executive, Pierpaolo Barbieri, told Bloomberg that rules in Argentina and Mexico rule out a quick USDT integration, CriptoNoticias reported, so that stake is a financial one for now.

The common thread is Tether funding apps that already hold users’ dollars, in countries where local currencies have lost value. Peso differs in stage and in focus. It is a pre-seed company whose pitch is spending USDT at the till rather than just holding it, and its home market is one where the government is still deciding how far the stablecoin may go.

For Tether, every new payment app is a new outlet for USDT. Coindaro’s profile of Tether, the company behind USDT covers its reserves, audits and wallet freezes. A day before the Peso news, on 20 October, Tether Capital said it had joined the $1.5 billion Series E of AI chip firm Tenstorrent, a reminder that its investment programme now reaches well beyond payments.

What is still unknown

The size of the round is the first gap. Peso’s user numbers, the volume of USDT that passes through its app and its valuation are not public either. Its licence status in each of its four markets is not stated.

Then there is Bolivia’s rulebook. Peso’s model depends on the bridge between USDT and local bank accounts staying open. If Bolivia adopts a framework that recognises USDT for payments, that bridge gets firmer. If the authorities tighten the rules, for example as part of the FATF work on money laundering, apps like Peso would have to adapt. Neither outcome has a date.

Stablecoins in two sentences, and what it means in Europe

A stablecoin is a crypto token designed to keep a fixed value, here one US dollar, backed by reserves held by its issuer; our beginner’s guide to stablecoins explains how they work and what can go wrong. In Bolivia, USDT does the job of a dollar account for people who cannot easily get dollars from a bank.

European readers see a different picture. USDT is not authorised under the EU’s MiCA rules, and ESMA has given EU crypto firms until January to drop non-MiCA stablecoins. An app like Peso is aimed at a market where the dollar is scarce; in the euro area, the question is which regulated stablecoins remain available on licensed platforms.