NALA, a Tanzanian cross-border payments company that recently pivoted from local to international money transfers, has raised $10 million in a new funding round.
NALA will be able to hire more people and support expansion efforts in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Europe, as well as establish payment rails in Africa and expand into new countries, thanks to the funding.
Amplo, Accel, and Bessemer Partners are among the primary investors in this new round, which also includes local investors such as DFS Lab.
Jonas Templestein, co-founder and CTO of Monzo; Vladimir Tenev, Robinhood co-founder and CEO; Deel founder Alex Bouaziz; Laura Spiekerman, co-founder of Alloy; Peeyush Ranjan, the head of Google Payments; and early employees at Revolut and TransferWise were among the angel investors who contributed to NALA.
Sheel Tyle, the founder and general partner of Amplo, will join NALA’s board accorrding to a statement from the company.
NALA raised a seven-figure pre-seed round headed by Accel in 2019, approximately three years after the pre-seed round.
NALA developed a mobile money service in East Africa around that time and grew it to over 250,000 subscribers. However, after some customers expressed interest in moving money from the UK, NALA began testing international money transfers in 2021. Tanzania’s fintech has entered the remittance market, sending money to East African countries (Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania).
Despite digital lenders competing for less than 20% of the foreign money market, which is controlled by traditional offline companies, the remittance business opportunity is attractive.
With Africa being the most expensive continent to transfer money to, with average transaction costs of 10.6%, digital senders like NALA position themselves as platforms that offer the best rates and lowest prices.
Since launching the product last year, NALA has seen significant growth. The platform enables payments to Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, and Ghana from the United Kingdom. Over 8,000 customers have shifted over eight figures in transaction volume to Africa in the last six months.
