NALA has a platform which allows payments from the United Kingdom to African countries. Just recently, the startup, which is currently based in Tanzania, extended its services from domestic to international money transfers.
In 2019, newly established cross-border payments company created this mobile money platform to serve customers who are in diaspora and would like to send money from countries in the United Kingdom to Eastern African of which nations like Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania are currently its target.
And now, it is announcing that it has secured an investment of 10 million (in dollars) to be used to “build infrastructure across the continent where we can do outbound from the continent and allow people to send money back.” Its aim is basically to scale its business Apart from Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Ghana and South Africa, NALA seeks to be established in Twelve other African nations by the end of 2022 with “Nigeria” being an intended market.
The startup has other goals, which, in a discussion with TechCrunch, is to launch a crowdfunding campaign. NALA intends to replicate a particular business strategy which Eversend, its competitor have been practicing.
This journey of helping customers secure and reliable payments from the UK and the USA to Africa started three years ago. Back then, the startup got a seven-figure investment in a pre-seed round in which Accel participated.
This was in the year 2019. NALA had set up a mobile money service in East Africa and wanted to increase the number of users to 250,000 and beyond.
Employees at NALA
While this was on-going, the startup perceived that Kenyans, Ugandans and Tanzanians were seeking to transfer money countries in the United Kingdom were they were back home. This was what led to the NALA entering the Remittance business.
Indeed the Tanzanian startup thrived. After launch in 2021, NALA’s remittance business recorded more than 8,000 transactions, all in 8 figures. This happened last year, and the countries it reached were Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Ghana.
The main investors for this new seed round of financing are;
1). Amplo,
2). Accel
3). Bessemer Partners
4). DFS Lab
Angel Investors
NALA also received funds from an impressive group of angel investors —
5). Jonas Templestein, co-founder and CTO of Monzo;
6). Vladimir Tenev, Robinhood co-founder and CEO;
7). Deel founder Alex Bouaziz;
8). Laura Spiekerman, co-founder of Alloy;
9). Peeyush Ranjan, the head of Google Payments and early employees at Revolut and TransferWise.
