NALA, a Tanzania remittance startup, has secured $40 million in Series A funding to support its global expansion and enhance the reliability of payments to Africa by developing its payment rails. This is NALA’s second round of fundraising having raised $10 million in 2022, bringing the company’s funding to over $50 million.
The investment round was led by San Francisco-based VC firm Acrew Capital, with participation from DST Global, Norrsken22, HOF Capital, and existing investors including Amplo and NYCA Partners—several angel investors, including fintech founders Ryan King of Chime and Vlad Tenev of Robinhood.
The new funding will accelerate NALA’s global ambitions focusing on two things: first, NALA consumer business expanding beyond Africa, building services for the global migrant diaspora.
NALA, founded by Benjamin Fernandes, Nicolas Esteves and Nicolai Eddy in 2017, is a fintech and remittance company that simplifies money transfers and transactions without data connectivity. Their services include financial inclusion, digital financial services, mobile money, and fintech. The money transfer app allows users to make secure and reliable payments from Europe, the UK, and the US to 11 African countries in seconds.
Over the last 12 months, 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 seven members to a robust team of over 100 and today serves 500,000 customers.
Benjamin Fernandes, founder and CEO of NALA, said: “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.”
Acrew founding partner Lauren Kolodny said, “We believe Nala will be the leader in remittances for the next generation of Africans who are expected to account for 35% of all the world’s youth by 2050,” adding that the team “has deep local knowledge, fintech expertise, and unique community building know-how to build the cross-border payment rails for the next billion.”
