African payments company NALA has secured up to US$50 million in credit financing as it expands its cross border payments infrastructure and accelerates development of its planned neobank platform.
The company, which operates a money transfer platform connecting users in Europe, the UK and the US with recipients in Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda and Ghana, said the financing will support working capital requirements, product development and international growth.
The funding comes through a credit facility provided by Liquidity, a private credit and technology firm that uses AI driven investment models, via Mars Growth Capital, its joint venture with MUFG Bank Ltd. The financing structure is non dilutive.
NALA said an initial US$25 million facility includes an option to scale to at least US$50 million as transaction volumes increase. The company intends to use the capital to support customer account prefunding requirements and continue expanding infrastructure built around stablecoin powered payments.
The latest financing follows a period of expansion for the company. In 2023, NALA launched across the European Union, adding 19 new sending markets, and last year closed a US$40 million funding round.
“The financing from Liquidity validates our vision of building the definitive stablecoin payments infrastructure for the long term. At some point, our business was more than doubling every other quarter, we grew faster than we could handle pre-funding for single-direction payments, and everything broke. Liquidity came in quickly and was highly flexible, so their tailored capital is a lifeline for us. It provides the cash required for NALA to pre-fund customer accounts and unlock our next phase of growth,” said Benjamin Fernandes, founder and CEO of NALA.
Unlike equity funding, the credit structure provides access to capital without changing ownership, which can be particularly relevant for payments companies where liquidity requirements rise alongside transaction volumes.
Liquidity said the facility was structured around NALA’s payment infrastructure and growth profile across emerging market corridors.
“We conducted extensive bottom-up due diligence on NALA, stress-testing the model across a range of scenarios and created a bespoke, highly scalable facility that matches the sophistication of NALA’s operations,” said Paul Brodie, global head of investments at Liquidity.
The financing arrives as payments providers operating across multiple markets face increasing demands around liquidity management, settlement speed and infrastructure scaling, particularly as stablecoin based payment models move deeper into cross border transaction flows.
