Tanzania NALA Has Raises $10 Million In Seed Funding To Support Its Expansion And Talent Acquisition

Tanzania's NALA has raises $10 million in seed funding to support its expansion and talent acquisition

Tanzanian startup NALA, which specializes in cross-border payment processing, has raised $10 million in a seed funding round. NALA was founded in 2012. Amplo, Accel $ Bessemer Partners, and DFS Lab were the primary investors in the round. In addition, angel investors such as Peeyush Ranjan, the head of Google Payments, and Jonas Templestein, the co-founder and CTO of Monzo, took part in the roundtable discussion.

This round of funding comes on the heels of the startup raising an undisclosed amount of pre-seed funding.

Founded by Benjamin Fernandes, a former Tanzanian national television host of youth talk shows and sports shows, NALA is a fintech startup focused on financial inclusion. Paying money across borders from the United Kingdom (as well as from the United States and the European Union) to Africa is made possible.

Money sent by people who live outside their countries of origin accounts for the vast majority of a country's foreign exchange inflows, demonstrating the enormous importance of remittances as a factor in economic development in developing countries. Sub-Saharan Africa had the highest remittance costs, with an average of 8.17 percent in the fourth quarter of 2020, according to World Bank figures.

When it comes to using mobile money services in Tanzania, it can be difficult due to the unstable internet and high service fees that are in place. Aside from that, sending money requires the user to enter between 39 and 46 digits, but NALA has significantly simplified this process. Money transfers to and from other countries began on the platform in 2020, and the platform's user base has grown from 100,000 in 2019 to more than 250,000 users in 2019.

This year, NALA is the first East African company to graduate from the Y Combinator accelerator program. The majority of NALA's users are based in the diaspora, according to the organization. In addition, over 8,000 customers have transferred over $10 million in transaction volume to Africa in the last six months alone.

Expansion of product offerings and acquisition of new talent

The investment will allow NALA to hire additional talent and accelerate its growth efforts in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Europe as a result of the investment. In this regard, the startup has received license approvals from the appropriate authorities. Additionally, it plans to build payment rails throughout Africa and expand its operations into new countries as well. At the moment, NALA is active in Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Ghana, and South Africa, among other places. Nigeria will be one of the 12 African countries in which the startup hopes to be operational by the end of the year.

Additionally, the fintech company intends to officially launch multi-currency accounts, which will allow members of the African diaspora to store local African currencies while traveling in the United States and abroad. This is a beta-testing process. Thank you for your patience. Additionally, it is currently piloting NALA for Businesses, which enables diaspora entrepreneurs to make payments to African countries through the NALA system.

The NALA platform will also allow its users the ability to send money from Africa to the United States and Great Britain via wire transfer. All of these initiatives are intended to help the company distinguish itself as more than a remittance service provider.