NALA, a fintech startup has raised $40 million in Series A funding led by Lauren Kolodny of Acrew Capital (which invested in Anything World and Nokod Security), who was featured in the Forbes Midas list in both 2023 and 2024. With participation from DST Global, Amplo, represented by Sheel Tyle. The majority of previous investors increased their stakes by taking super pro-rata investments in the round.
New investors participating include Norrsken22 (which invested in Orca and Smile Identity), 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. This round comes in less than two years of raising $10 million in seed funding.
Funds utilisation
The new funding will accelerate the company’s global ambitions focusing on two things: firstly, it will expand NALA consumer business beyond Africa, building services for the global migrant diaspora. Secondly, it will focus on building Rafiki, its new B2B payments platform.
What challenge does it tackle?
Last year, Africans were estimated to have lost nearly $8 billion in fees. By the end of 2023, just six African countries supported real-time payments. On average, 7-8% were lost to transaction fees every time money was sent home. Africa is still by far the most expensive continent to send money to. So, in 2021, we decided to build a better option.
Playing a major role in resolving this, NALA prioritises two goals – reducing the cost and increasing the reliability of sending money back to Africa. The super app wants to be positioned as the ‘Transferwise of Africa’.
The team behind NALA
NALA was founded by Benjamin Fernandes, CEO, who holds an MBA from Stanford University and had formerly worked on building mobile money services for TV subscriptions in East Africa.
Steering NALA with him are two more leaders. Nicolas Esteves, CTO, grew up in West Africa and brings 12 years of fintech experience, including time spent building Osper and Monzo. Now, Nicolas leads the engineering, data, and fraud teams. Nicolai Eddy, COO, joined NALA from Morningstar, previously building quantitative index portfolios. Nicolai is based in the Nairobi office and builds our Rafiki, treasury, operations, and partnerships teams.
NALA was built by world-class engineers from Wise, Revolut, Monzo, Mpesa, and other major global fintech companies.
What does the fintech do?
The consumer money transfer app enables users to make secure and reliable payments from Europe, the UK, and the US to 11 African countries in seconds.
Its B2B platform Rafiki enables lightning-fast payments to individuals and businesses globally on the African continent. It 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.
By building community-powered financial solutions, fintech makes it easier to handle day-to-day payments and conduct business in Africa. The company focuses on building innovative products and services, unlocking faster, safer, and more affordable cross-border payments.
Benjamin Fernandes, Founder & 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 own 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.”
What do we think about NALA?
The fintech startup founded by a Stanford MBA graduate has raised $40 million to expand its consumer business beyond Africa and develop its B2B payments platform, Rafiki. Aiming to reduce high remittance costs to Africa, NALA aspires to be the ‘Transferwise of Africa,’ enhancing affordability and reliability in cross-border payments.
