Nala Raises $40m To Expand Consumer Business Beyond Africa

Nala raised $40 million in a Series A funding round to expand its consumer business beyond Africa and to build its B2B payment platform for Africa.

The new offerings will expand upon Nala’s app, which was launched in 2021 and now allows users in the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union to send money to 11 African countries, Nala said in a Tuesday (July 9) blog post.

The company aims to serve the 1.3 billion people in Africa that it covers as well as the “next billion” that also includes a majority of the world’s emerging markets, per the post.

“This funding is a testament to the hard work of our team and the trust our investors have in our vision,” Nala founder and CEO Benjamin Fernandes said in the post. “It marks a new chapter in our journey to revolutionise payments for the next billion.

Over the past 12 months, Nala has seen its revenue grow tenfold and has become profitable and cash flow positive for the first time, according to the post.

Over the past 20 months, the company saw its transaction volume increase by 34 times, the release said.

It also grew its team from seven members to nearly 100 and expanded its customer base to nearly 500,000 worldwide, per the release.

With the new funding, Nala aims to expand its consumer business beyond Africa, adding services for the global migrant diaspora, according to the release.

The company also plans to build its B2B payments platform, Rafiki, designing it to ensure reliability, manage treasury directly, improve error mapping, reduce user costs, and streamline payouts and collections, per the release.

“It’s time to build a better financial future for Africa and beyond,” Fernandes said in the post.

Nala’s Series A round comes about two-and-a-half years after it raised $10 million in a seed round.

At that time, in January 2022, the company had pivoted from local to international transfers; allowed payments from the U.K. to Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Ghana; and had helped more than 8,000 customers transfer $10 million to African countries in the previous six months.