Tether and Gnosis Back Sorted Wallet With $4.4M to Reach Feature-Phone Users in Africa and South Asia
Sorted Wallet, a non-custodial crypto wallet built for low-cost mobile devices, has closed a $4.4 million seed round co-led by Tether and Gnosis, with expansion into Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia as the stated priority.
The Hong Kong-based startup, founded in 2021, announced the raise on May 20, 2026. The round brings Sorted's total disclosed funding to approximately $5.9 million, following a $1.5 million pre-seed that Tether led in September 2024. The company says it has logged 275,246 downloads across 165 countries since launching its first product in 2023.
What makes Sorted different from most crypto wallets
Sorted was built from the ground up for KaiOS, a mobile operating system that runs on sub-$50 feature phones popular in rural and low-income markets. Competitors like MetaMask, Trust Wallet, and Phantom require mid-range to high-end Android or iOS hardware.
KaiOS ranks second among mobile operating systems in India, largely through the mass-market Reliance JioPhone, and accounts for a substantial share of mobile internet access across Africa, particularly in rural areas.
Sorted has since added Android, the Indus App Store (an India-focused Android storefront launched by PhonePe), and Palm Store to its distribution channels.
CEO Stephen Browne co-founded the company alongside Shishir Gupta. The wallet supports eight digital assets across four blockchains: Tron, Ethereum, Polygon, and Celo. USDT, Tether's dollar-pegged stablecoin, is a core supported asset. Features include P2P on-chain payments, staking, live price tracking, crypto-to-airtime conversion, AI-assisted financial education, and support for 12 languages.
Why these markets, and why now
The timing reflects measurable momentum in both target regions. Sub-Saharan Africa processed roughly $205 billion in on-chain transaction volume between July 2024 and June 2025, a 52 percent increase year-over-year and the third-fastest growth rate of any region globally, behind Asia-Pacific and Latin America, according to Chainalysis.
Eight percent of those transactions were under $10,000, compared to 6 percent globally. That gap suggests the volume is driven by everyday financial activity rather than institutional speculation.
Remittance costs give the context added weight. The World Bank's Q1 2025 data puts the global average cost of sending money internationally at 6.36 percent. In South Africa, the average cost hit 15.23 percent. Six of the eight most expensive remittance corridors in the world originate in Sub-Saharan Africa, with several exceeding 20 percent of the transferred amount. Stablecoin wallets do not solve every part of that problem, but they may reduce friction at the settlement layer.
South Asia is moving fast in a different direction. The region posted roughly $300 billion in crypto transaction volume through the first half of 2025, growing at approximately 80 percent year-over-year.
Pakistan enacted the Virtual Assets Act 2026 in March, signed by President Asif Ali Zardari, establishing a federal licensing authority (PVARA) and creating the most comprehensive crypto licensing regime in South Asia.
Even in Bangladesh, where cryptocurrency remains formally banned, an estimated 7.3 million users transacted in crypto in 2024. That level of activity signals real demand, though the ban creates compliance complexity for wallet operators like Sorted seeking to serve the market.
India presents its own regulatory friction. The country imposes a 30 percent tax on crypto earnings alongside a 1 percent tax deducted at source on transactions, adding a meaningful cost layer for users in what is Sorted's largest KaiOS market.
Tether's investment pattern in May 2026
This is not a standalone deal. Two days before the Sorted announcement, Tether disclosed an investment in LemFi, a cross-border remittance platform that embeds USDT as a settlement layer across Africa-to-Asia payment corridors. Read together, the two investments appear to sketch a layered strategy: LemFi handles diaspora remittance flows at the corridor level, and Sorted handles device-level wallet access for the recipients at the far end. That reading is Verse Press analysis; Tether has not publicly stated that intent.
Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino framed the earlier pre-seed investment in terms of financial access. "This investment underscores Tether's commitment to advancing financial inclusion and economic empowerment in underserved regions," he said at that time. Sorted CEO Stephen Browne added: "Financial empowerment should not depend on owning the latest smartphone. With Tether's investment, we are turning that belief into reality." Neither executive had issued updated statements tied specifically to the seed round at the time of publication. No statement from Gnosis was available at publication time.
Tether's broader Africa portfolio also includes Kotani Pay, which provides fiat on-ramp and off-ramp infrastructure across African markets, and a partnership with Opera's MiniPay that reached 7 million phone-verified USDT wallets by December 2025.
Gnosis adds a payments mandate to its portfolio
Gnosis, a blockchain infrastructure company, co-led the round. Its associated decentralised autonomous organisation, GnosisDAO, approved a $40 million venture fund in October 2024, with a mandate covering real-world assets, crypto infrastructure, and payment rails.
The fund's existing portfolio includes Monerium (euro stablecoin infrastructure) and Schuman Financial (a MiCA-compliant stablecoin issuer). Backing a feature-phone wallet targeting unbanked users in emerging markets is a logical extension of that payments thesis.
What comes next
Sorted enters a competitive but underdeveloped slice of the market. Opera's MiniPay is its closest analog, having demonstrated that demand for lightweight stablecoin wallets in Africa is real and scalable. The $4.4 million raise is modest by venture standards, but the company's distribution through existing app stores and KaiOS's installed base means the capital can stretch further than it would in a smartphone-first market. KaiOS estimates roughly 1 billion non-smartphone users globally, representing Sorted's core addressable market.
The more significant question is regulatory. As South Asian and African licensing regimes mature, wallet providers operating in those regions will face increasing compliance requirements, and Sorted's ability to navigate that environment will shape how far the download count climbs.