Cross-border trade payments
Sarraf is the platform where buyer and seller agree, lock funds, and complete payment. No banks in between.
A buyer and a seller on opposite sides of a border, and one platform between them. Five stages, each one recorded.
Buyer and seller set the terms together: goods, price, documents, dates. Nothing moves until both sides approve.
Terms are agreed inside the interface, field by field. Work to ICC UCP 600 rules or to your own contract — either way, upload the proforma invoice or the sale contract and the platform reads it into structured terms for both sides to correct and approve. Every approval is kept with its author and its timestamp.
The buyer's payment goes into escrow: money held safe until both sides keep their word. The seller watches it lock.
Escrow is a smart contract on-chain. The money is held by code rather than by a company account: no employee and no single party can move it, and the contract can only pay out on the conditions both sides signed.
With payment secured, the goods sail. Shipping documents join the trade record as they are issued.
Each document is uploaded, fingerprinted, and written into the trade record together with the party that filed it and the moment it arrived. What was presented, and when, stops being a matter of opinion.
Before any money moves, the documents are checked against the deal. This is the step where the trade is actually decided.
Three stages, all of which must pass: the document set is complete against the agreed terms, the documents are consistent with one another, and each one is confirmed by the party that issued it. Discrepancies surface as flags on the record, and the final call stays with the parties.
The documents pass, the key turns, and payment reaches the seller in minutes rather than weeks.
Release is a contract call, not a bank instruction. The final state is written to the shared ledger, where buyer, seller, and Sarraf read the same record and no single party can rewrite it.
Buyer and seller set the terms together: goods, price, documents, dates. Nothing moves until both sides approve.
The buyer's payment goes into escrow: money held safe until both sides keep their word. The seller watches it lock.
With payment secured, the goods sail. Shipping documents join the trade record as they are issued.
Before any money moves, the documents are checked against the deal. This is the step where the trade is actually decided.
The documents pass, the key turns, and payment reaches the seller in minutes rather than weeks.
The five stages read simply on purpose. Underneath each one is a piece of correspondent banking replaced by something the two sides can run themselves.
Buyer and seller negotiate in one interface instead of a chain of emails and faxes. Goods, amount, incoterms, documents, dates: each field is proposed, seen, and approved by both sides, and every change is kept with its author and time.
Upload the proforma invoice or the sale contract and the platform reads it into structured terms — a UCP 600 profile or a custom set, filled in and ready for both sides to correct. The documents you already have become the starting point instead of a retyping job.
From lock to release the payment sits in a smart contract on-chain. No account officer stands between the money and the terms, and every state change is written to a record both sides can read.
This is the work banks charge for and still disclaim. Here it is explicit, and all three stages have to pass before payment can move.
Every document the agreed terms call for is present, in the agreed form, within the agreed dates.
Quantities, values, parties, and goods descriptions match across the invoice, the transport document, insurance, and certificates of origin.
The party that issued a document confirms it on the record, so no paper passes on trust alone.
| Aspect | Traditional trade methods | Sarraf |
|---|---|---|
| Where it works | Only where the banking system works well | All around the world |
| Who takes part | Buyer, seller, issuing bank, correspondent bank and advising bank | Buyer and seller, on one platform |
| Time to pay | Days to weeks of processing | Minutes after approvals |
| Cost | High bank commissions | Lower transaction fees |
| Procedure | Long manual procedures with a lot of paperwork | All digital, easy access |
| Reliability | Banks take no responsibility for fake documentation | Online verification with the approving parties |
| The record | Paper files spread across institutions | One shared ledger, sealed |
Every trade lives on a distributed ledger: one shared record that buyer, seller, and Sarraf can all read, and no single party can rewrite. This is the technology the platform stands on. You do not need to understand it to use it, the same way you do not need to understand vaults to trust one. But it is always there to check.
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View on the ledgerRecorded on the Sarraf test network.
The model follows the logic of Islamic finance: money held in escrow rather than lent at interest, terms visible to both sides. Formal advisory review is on the roadmap, and every honest trade is welcome.
Tell us about the trade you are trying to complete — the route, the goods, what is holding it up. We read every message and reply to the address you leave.