How Sorbet is building MENA's global payment layer on Due's infrastructure

Key takeaways

Cross-border payments in the Middle East and Africa have historically been slow, expensive, and fragmented. Businesses operating across the region face a patchwork of local rails, FX margins that eat into their bottom line, and settlement times that don't match the speed of modern commerce.

Sorbet is built to solve that. A global payments platform for freelancers and SMBs across MENA and Africa, Sorbet gives businesses a multi-currency account to send and receive money globally, with same-day settlement and no hidden FX markups. To power the payment infrastructure behind that promise, Sorbet chose Due.

The problem: MENA businesses are underserved by global payment infrastructure

Freelancers and small businesses in the Middle East and Africa face a specific set of challenges when it comes to getting paid internationally and paying suppliers or team members abroad. Traditional banking is slow to adapt, correspondent banking chains add cost and delay, and most global fintech platforms were built with Western markets as the primary use case.

Sorbet identified this gap early. The team set out to build a product that could serve businesses across the region with accounts in the currencies that matter to them, the ability to pay into markets across Africa and Asia, and a user experience that doesn't require navigating a different bank for each corridor.

The challenge was not the product. It was the infrastructure behind it. Building and maintaining direct connections to payment rails across dozens of markets is a significant undertaking for an early-stage company. Sorbet needed a partner who had already done that work.

Why Sorbet chose Due

[Due already had the payment rails and compliance infrastructure in the markets we wanted to expand into. That allowed us to move faster, launch confidently, and scale our global payment capabilities without rebuilding the connectivity layer ourselves.] - Maher Ayari, Co-founder at Sorbet

Instead of building market by market, Sorbet integrated once with Due. Through a single API, they gained access to SWIFT, SEPA, ACH, and local instant payment rails across 80+ countries. Two things mattered most: immediate corridor access and operational simplicity. No need to stitch together multiple providers. No need to rebuild infrastructure per region.

What's live: corridors powering Sorbet today

Sorbet currently uses Due's infrastructure to power collections and payouts across the following currencies:

Collections and payouts: USD, EUR, GBP, AED
Payouts: SAR (Saudi Riyal), CAD (Canadian Dollar), EGP (Egyptian Pound), INR (Indian Rupee), PKR (Pakistani Rupee), KES (Kenyan Shilling)

That coverage spans the Gulf, East Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia, reflecting where Sorbet's business customers are operating and where their teams, suppliers, and clients are based.

In practice, that means:

A UAE business paying contractors in Pakistan
A Saudi company settling invoices in Europe
An Egyptian startup getting paid by US clients

This is how businesses in the region actually operate.

The bigger picture: MENA's payment infrastructure moment

There is genuine excitement building around MENA as a payments market. Regulatory frameworks are maturing, stablecoin adoption is accelerating, and a new generation of fintech companies is building products that match how people and businesses in the region actually operate.

The question Sorbet's customers increasingly ask is: who's powering these flows? The answer matters. Payment infrastructure that is reliable, compliant, and genuinely connected to local rails in each market is still rare. Most providers still scale corridor by corridor. Sorbet didn't.

The shift in MENA isn't just toward digital payments. It's toward infrastructure that works across borders by default. Due's approach is to build that coverage comprehensively, connecting SWIFT, SEPA, ACH, and local instant payment rails across 80+ countries into a single API. For companies like Sorbet building the next generation of MENA fintech, that infrastructure is the foundation.

Building on Due

Sorbet is part of a growing number of fintechs, neobanks, and payment platforms using Due's infrastructure to expand into new corridors without building and maintaining each rail independently. That's the difference between launching regionally and operating globally from day one.

If you're building a payments product and need coverage across MENA, Africa, or beyond, Due's unified API gives you the rails to move money globally from day one.