- NALA has secured a $50M credit facility from Liquidity through Mars Growth Capital, its joint venture with MUFG Bank, to scale stablecoin payment corridors across the US, Europe, Africa, and Asia
- Founder Benjamin Fernandes applied to Y Combinator five times, was rejected four times, got in on his fifth attempt, then received a government shutdown order from Tanzania’s central bank days later
- The global stablecoin payment infrastructure market stood at $7.6B in 2025 and is projected to reach $89.4B by 2034, growing at a 32.1% CAGR, according to Research Intelo
The day Benjamin Fernandes finally got into Y Combinator – on his fifth application, after four rejections – Tanzania’s central bank ordered him to shut his company down. Most founders would have taken the hint. Fernandes did the layoffs, ran out of money, and started again from scratch.
NALA, the New York-headquartered global stablecoin payments company founded in 2018 byBenjamin Fernandes, has secured a credit facility of up to $50M from Liquidity through Mars Growth Capital, its joint venture with Japan’s MUFG Bank. The initial commitment is $25M, structured to scale alongside NALA’s transaction volumes. Total equity funding to date stands at $50M, following a $40M Series A in July 2024 led by Acrew Capital, with participation from DST Global, Norrsken22, HOF Capital, Amplo, and angel investors including Vlad Tenev of Robinhood and Ryan King of Chime. NALA pursued debt financing this time deliberately, the company says it still holds more than half of the capital from its 2024 equity round, making non-dilutive working capital the smarter next step.
The founder who came back
Fernandes grew up in Tanzania, became a national television presenter at 17, and earned a scholarship to the US at the same age. At 21, he became the youngest African ever accepted to Stanford Graduate School of Business and the first Tanzanian to attend both Stanford GSB and Harvard Kennedy School. He and his sister were the first in their family to go to university. After Stanford, he turned down US job offers, returned to Tanzania, and built NALA from his parents’ living room.
The road was not clean. He applied to every startup accelerator in Tanzania without success. He applied to Y Combinator five times. On his fifth attempt in 2019, he got in and days later received a cease-and-desist from Tanzania’s largest mobile money provider, followed by a shutdown order from the central bank. He did the layoffs. He pivoted. He ran out of money again. By 2021 he had rebuilt the business around international remittances, and by 2022 had raised a $10M seed round. Today NALA has moved billions of dollars across Africa and Asia.
What NALA actually built
NALA operates two products. Its consumer app connects users in the US, UK, and EU to more than 249 banks and 26 mobile money services across 16 countries. Its B2B infrastructure API, Rafiki, gives enterprise customers the same stablecoin payment rails to move money at scale, pre-funding accounts, managing treasury, and processing collections and payouts in real time without the delays and fees of traditional correspondent banking.
The problem NALA solves is structural. Cross-border payments to emerging markets still cost an average of 8–10% per transaction, according to the World Bank, and settlement often takes days. Stablecoins settle in real time at a fraction of that cost. Enterprise demand for compliant stablecoin collections and payouts connecting developed markets with Africa and Asia has accelerated sharply over the past year.
“The financing validates our vision of building long-term stablecoin infrastructure,” says Fernandes. “At one point, our business was growing faster than we could handle and everything broke. Liquidity moved quickly and structured flexible financing that gives us the capital to pre-fund customer accounts and unlock the next stage of growth.”
Why Liquidity structured the deal around NALA’s rails
The facility was built specifically around NALA’s payment architecture, not a generic credit line. Paul Brodie, Global Head of Investments at Liquidity, says: “We structured the facility around NALA’s compliant stablecoin rails, cross-border payments, and rapid growth across emerging markets. After extensive due diligence, we built a scalable financing structure designed specifically for how NALA operates.” Liquidity, through its Mars Growth Capital joint venture with MUFG Bank — one of the world’s largest banking networks by assets — brings both institutional capital and a global banking infrastructure that gives NALA’s regulatory credibility a significant boost.
The competitive landscape
In the enterprise stablecoin infrastructure space, NALA competes with BVNK, which raised a $50M Series B at a $750M valuation to expand its enterprise stablecoin rails globally, and Bridge, the developer-focused stablecoin platform acquired by Stripe in a reported $1.1B deal. Ramp Network previously raised a $70M Series B to expand fiat-to-crypto infrastructure. Where BVNK focuses primarily on enterprise clients in developed markets and Bridge was acquired before reaching NALA’s emerging market depth, NALA’s competitive edge is its direct integration into mobile money networks, local bank rails, and regulatory frameworks across Africa and Asia, corridors its closest competitors have not built.
Citi’s base case projects the stablecoin market reaching $1.9T by 2030, up from $282B in 2025. Bloomberg Intelligence forecasts stablecoin payment flows hitting $56.6T by 2030, an 81% CAGR from the $2.9T recorded in 2025.
The question NALA now faces is not whether stablecoin infrastructure will become the default rail for emerging market payments, that trajectory is increasingly hard to argue against. The question is whether a founder who rebuilt his company twice, survived a government shutdown, moved billions across corridors the financial system largely ignored, and still came back for more, can scale fast enough before the infrastructure giants decide emerging markets are finally worth their attention.
