The Hong Kong-headquartered startup is building financial rails for the hundreds of millions still locked out of the digital economy, starting with a $20 feature phone
Across Lagos, Nairobi, Dar es Salaam, and Karachi, hundreds of millions of people carry phones that most fintech companies have never designed for. They are $20 feature phones, small, durable, and completely ignored by the traditional finance and crypto ecosystem. Sorted was built to change that.
The lightweight stablecoin wallet startup has closed a $4.4 million funding round. The round was led by Tether, the world’s largest stablecoin issuer, with over 570 million users globally, and Gnosis, a leading decentralised finance infrastructure company, alongside other Web3 and fintech investors. Tether also backed Sorted’s previous $1.5 million pre-seed round.
The raise arrives as Sorted crosses 500,000 downloads across 160 countries, driven mostly by users in Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, and Pakistan, markets where currency instability, limited banking access, and expensive cross-border transfers are a daily reality.
Built for the infrastructure that actually exists
