NALA

Today, I'm excited to announce we have raised $40m Series A It's been an incredible journey so far, we are just getting started, give us a couple of years, we've got some big plans. Techcrunch: https://lnkd.in/dkE2WvvM I'm super proud of our team: 34x growth in 20 months, 10x revenue growth in the past 10 months and profitable. I'm grateful for Nicolas Esteves and Nicolai Eddy who I have had the privilege of building NALA with the past 4 years, they have put their life into building this company with me with countless late nights, weekends constantly trying to execute on our bold mission to build payments for the next billion! NALA x RAFIKI #1PercentBuilt.

Did I just become a NALA ambassador? Wait, I am one! 😊 I've been a client since 2023 and on Wednesday evening, I attended their mixer event in London. I checked out the event alert in my “Social” email folder on a whim and it was easy to sign up for this one (I’ll tell you why in a bit). I first heard about NALA through Ann Mwangi a great friend I met in graduate school (she introduced me to many great things, I could write an essay😀). The moment this happened is still vivid, she found me in Boots Library Nottingham Trent University and asked, “Did you download the Nala app?” I was like, “What are you on about?” she’d sent me a link earlier. She went on, “If you download it, I get £10!” Such a great incentive! I said say less and downloaded the app. I was impressed by its features, like showing comparative currency exchange rates so you know you are getting the better deal. At the time, I didn’t have money to send anywhere (UK tuition… ahemm🤨), but that changed when I got a part-time job. Even then, I wasn’t moving big money, but I could afford to share amounts like 20,000 UGX (about 4-5 pounds) here and there via mobile money. And for me, that mattered. The app met me where I was, “a muntu wa wansi” as we say in Uganda meaning “the ordinary person.” I have been using Nala since then because of the convenience and ability to send money to both bank accounts and mobile wallets easily. At some point I started following Benjamin Fernandes the founder here on LinkedIn, and recently I saw an announcement of his two co-founders and then went on to read the founding story. I love a good success story and the journey of the company is one of those. It was an inspiring tale of finding people who believe in you and your dreams but also the hard work and grit that goes on behind building great things. I especially resonated with the part about finding people who believe in you and support your convictions, it’s incredible how life-changing that can be. So, when I saw the invitation to the mixer, I remembered that story and thought, why not go and learn more? I’m so glad I did. I got to hear more about Nala’s journey, the people behind the platform, their customer-centred approach, their work culture, and exciting new products in development. I got to learn of some features on the platform I hadn’t made use of yet and met some great people. Nala now operates in 21 sender countries and allows transfers to 14 receiving countries, primarily across Africa, Asia and growing into more markets. Check them out please!

hiii Linkedin Canada folks, we are working on getting Canada live on NALA. I'd love your help! If you send money to Asia or Africa from Canada, please help us by filling out this survey: https://lnkd.in/gqgis_BV #TheNextBillion

🇨🇦 NALA is coming to Canada! 🌍 We’re excited to bring NALA to Canada to make it easier, faster, and more affordable to send money abroad. As we prepare to launch, we’d love to hear from you. If you’re in Canada and sending money to Africa or Asia, your input will help us build the best possible experience for you and your loved ones. One of our core values at NALA is Customer First, Always - because we’re building this for you. 🙏 Please take 2 minutes to complete this short survey: https://lnkd.in/dSUmXMFA Your feedback means the world to us - literally. 🌍 🩵

Hey folks, We are on the lookout for both Senior and Lead Backend Engineers to join our teams at NALA and RAFIKI. You can based in UK, EU (As long as you're in GMT+3 thats fine for us on a remote basis). If you live in London, we have a great office where we get together 4 days a week. At NALA we're building payments for the Next Billion. This means transforming how money moves into Africa, Asia and beyond. By building cutting-edge payment solutions, we’re simplifying financial transactions for individuals and businesses alike—helping them thrive in a global economy. RAFIKI is our newly formed B2B payments business. We are already a dedicated payout partner for 2 of the largest remittance companies in the world. We’ve already grown Rafiki from 3 to 30 people in 12 months. We want to hire Senior Backend Engineers across both NALA and RAFIKI to help us take things to the next level. For us, this means; - Build business facing features together with the frontend team - Integrate with payment partners to offer fast and reliable payments across many countries - Implement core business logic such as Know Your Business, Identification Verification, Anti Money Laundering and fraud monitoring to keep our customers safe - Quickly launch new countries by writing modular and configurable code to adapt to market specific and evolving requirements - Genuinely caring about customers and making sure their needs are met (this is a team effort and not just down to our Product or Engineering Managers) Here’s a quick look back at what we accomplished last year: 🔥 17x Revenue growth in 20 months, 10x Revenue growth in 12 months for NALA 🔥 Become Profitable 🔥 Raising $40m Series A (Backed by Acrew, DST Global, AMPLO, Accel, Y-Combinator, Norrsken and Bessemer) 🔥 46x RAFIKI volumes 🔥 10x RAFIKI customer base If you’d like to know more, you can check out the advert below, contact me or Nicolas Esteves, Alessandro Colaneri, Chris Petropoulos, Edoardo Foco and George Arscott to find out more.