African money transfer fintech Nala concludes Series A funding round with $40 million raised

Nala, a remittance app operating in Africa, recently concluded a Series A funding round, marking a huge success. The money transfer fintech reported raising $40 million, which will be of great use for its plan of global expansion.

Nala’s major goal right now is to expand to other areas of the world, but along the way, it also intends to enhance the reliability of payments to Africa. Instead of relying on another service, it has decided to lay down its own payment rails, and the $40 million it had raised during Series A will be instrumental in achieving these goals.

The round itself was led by Acrew Capital’s Lauren Kolodny. As for other participants, there were several major names included, including Amplo and DST Global, as well as the firm’s previous investors who continued to show their support.

It is also worth noting that the raise was supported by multiple notable fintech founders. One example is the co-founder of Chime, Ryan King. Another example is Robinhood’s co-founder and the founder of Klarna, Vlad Tenev.

A great year for Nala

The new cash injection came after what has been a very transformative year for Nala. The company finally reached profitability after seeing a ten-fold increase in revenue and a 34x boost in transaction value. Nala also hit 500,000 customers, and its team went from only seven members to over 100.

The company’s money transfer app allows consumers to make reliable, secure payments from other parts of the world to Africa. Whether the funds are coming from Europe, the UK, or the US, they can safely arrive in as many as 11 African nations within seconds.

On top of that, Nala also started building its own B2B platform to enable fast payments for individuals and businesses globally who need to send money to others on the African continent. The hope is that the app will be able to emulate the success that solutions like dLocal have seen in Latin America or what Airwallex achieved in Asia.

Nala will no longer talk about the change, but make it happen

While quite a major success, this was not the first fundraising round that Nala has held in the last 20 months. Previously, the company held a round in 2022, raising over $10 million thanks to several major contributors, including Amplo, Accel, and Bessemer Partners.

Commenting on the success of the new round, however, the firm’s founder and CEO, Benjamin Fernandes, stated that the $40 million funding round marks a pivotal moment for his company. The funds will allow Nala to go beyond remittances and extend its reach beyond Africa.

His plan is to build a robust payments ecosystem and reinvest the money to enhance the firm’s infrastructure, ensure reliable, low-cost payments for all, and support the launch of Nala’s own payment rails. With the added expansion of the B2B platform, Rafiki, Nala will no longer simply be talking about change — it will make it happen.