Opera and Celo Partner to Scale Stablecoin Payments Across Asia and Latin America

Source: CryptoNewsNet Original Title: Opera, Celo Scale Up Partnership to ‘Make Stablecoins Useful’ For Millions of Users Original Link: Opera and the Celo Foundation announced their extended partnership to bring financial inclusion to a billion people by 2030 by making low-cost stablecoin payments “ubiquitous around the world.”

The announcement includes plans for stablecoin-backed payment cards, expanded real-world asset offerings, and a joint Mini App Roadshow across Asia and South America. Their goal is to give people “a reliable stablecoin wallet that allows them to receive payments, save, and send payments—no matter where they are,” according to Jørgen Arnesen, EVP Mobile at Opera.

MiniPay Growth

MiniPay, a non-custodial stablecoin wallet provider built on Celo, claims to have grown to 11 million activated wallets and processed over 300 million transactions since launching in September 2023. This has helped push Celo to the top of Ethereum layer-2s by daily active users, with 700,000 daily active users (DAUs) and over 3 million weekly USDT users.

MiniPay recently added support for Mercado Pago, the digital payments platform of Latin American e-commerce firm Mercado Libre, and PIX, Brazil’s central bank-run instant payments system. This enables stablecoin-to-real-time payments in Argentina and Brazil, with plans to expand globally to further reduce off-ramping friction.

Regional Market Expansion

The joint MiniApp roadshow will run across Asia and South America in early 2026, targeting regions with strong developer activity and expanding crypto adoption.

Latin America has recorded nearly $1.5 trillion in crypto transaction volume between July 2022 and June 2024, with Brazil leading the region with $318.8 billion in crypto value received, representing 109.9% period-over-period growth.

Over 90% of Brazilian crypto flows are now stablecoin-related, with stablecoin purchases making up more than half of all exchange activity in Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia.

Market Context

The stablecoin market is currently valued at over $310 billion, according to CoinGecko data. However, market participants expect that total capitalization will remain below $360 billion through early 2026.