NALA, one of Africa’s largest Fintech companies, has announced raising $40 million in Series A funding. This investment will fuel NALA’s global expansion and enhance the reliability of payments to Africa through the development of its payment rails. NALA’s offerings include a consumer app that enables secure and instant money transfers from Europe, the UK, and the US to 11 African countries and a new B2B platform, Rafiki, designed to provide lightning-fast payments for businesses and individuals across the African continent. With significant growth in revenue, transaction volume, and team size, NALA is poised to revolutionize payment technology in Africa and beyond.
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NALA, a leading Tanzanian fintech company, announced today that it has raised $40 million in Series A funding to support its global expansion and enhance the reliability of payments to Africa by developing its payment rails.
The past 12 months have been transformative for NALA. The company achieved a 10x increase in revenue, reached profitability, and had positive cash flow. In the past 20 months, NALA saw a 34x increase in transaction volume. The NALA team has grown from just 7 members to a robust team of over 100. Finally, today, NALA proudly serves 500,000 customers.
The $40 million funding round was led by Lauren Kolodny of Acrew Capital, who was featured in the Forbes Midas list in both 2023 and 2024. With participation from DST Global, Amplo, represented by Sheel Tyle, additionally, the majority of previous investors increased their stakes by taking super pro-rata investments in the round. New investors participating include: Norrsken22, HOF Capital and notable fintech founders investing in this round including Ryan King, co-founder of Chime, and Vlad Tenev, the co-founder of Robinhood and the founder of Klarna.
The new funding will accelerate NALA’s global ambitions focusing on two things:
- NALA consumer business expanding beyond Africa, building services for the global migrant diaspora.
- Building Rafiki, its new B2B payments platform. Rafiki is designed to lay the payment rails for the next billion users, ensuring reliability, managing treasury directly, improving error mapping, reducing user costs, and streamlining payouts and collections. Similar to how local revolutionized payments in Latin America and AirWallex transformed the Asian market, Rafiki is set to build a robust payment infrastructure for Africa.
This is NALA’s second round of fundraising in 20 months, having raised $10m through Accel, Amplo, and Bessemer Partners in 2022. Other notable angels who are investors include Jonas, the co-founder & CTO of Monzo, and Robinhood founder Vlad Tenev. Laura, the co-founder of Alloy, Deel founder Alex Boaziz, and early employees at Revolut and Wise.
“This $40 million funding round marks a pivotal moment for NALA. It will enable us to go beyond remittances and extend our reach beyond Africa, building a robust payments ecosystem. We’re reinvesting this money to enhance our infrastructure, ensuring reliable, low-cost payments for all. With the launch of our payment rails and the expansion of our B2B platform Rafiki, we’re not just talking about change – we’re building it. We’ve got some bold, ambitious plans, give us a couple of years.” said Benjamin Fernandes, Founder & CEO of NALA.
