Pan-African remittances startup Nala has secured $40 million in a series A round led by CEO Benjamin Fernandes, making it one of the largest in African tech history.

Acrew Capital, a venture capital firm based in San Francisco, led the round. Other participants included:

• DST Global
• Norrsken22
• HOF Capital

and existing investors including:

• Amplo
• NYCA Partners

Several angel investors, among them the founders of fintech:

• Ryan King of Chime and
• Vlad Tenev

also made stakes in Robinhood.

Raising $10 million in 2022, Nala intends to use the money to improve its current infrastructure in addition to growing its remittance services internationally, especially into other developing regions like Asia and Latin America.

By introducing our own payment rails and growing Rafiki, our business-to-business platform, we’re not simply discussing change—we’re implementing it. Please give us a few years to implement our audacious and ambitious goals.

The fintech unveiled Rafiki in January 2024, a solitary API that allows companies worldwide to transfer money to Africa. Nala claims that the purpose of the B2B platform was to:

• Ensure reliability
• Manage treasury directly
• Better error mapping
• Reduce user costs, and
• Streamline payouts

“For Rafiki, active users of Nala include international banks processing cross-border payments, international payroll providers like Cadana, and international remittance firms like TransferGo. The goal, according to Fernandes, is to make cross-border payments possible for financial institutions and businesses.

Fernandes claims that ensuring service delivery has been the driving force behind the expansion of the startup’s consumer business, which presently generates more than 90% of its total revenue. Nala has already achieved profitability and is headed towards 500,000 consumers.