Tanzanian payments infrastructure company NALA has secured an initial $25 million credit facility from Liquidity, the AI-driven private credit provider, with an option to scale to at least $50 million — capital the company says it needs to pre-fund customer accounts and keep pace with demand that has at times outstripped its balance sheet.
The facility was arranged through Mars Growth Capital, the joint venture between Liquidity and MUFG Bank, Japan’s largest bank. It provides working capital for NALA’s stablecoin-powered payments infrastructure without requiring the company to raise additional equity. NALA confirmed it still holds more than half of the $40 million equity round it raised in mid-2024, meaning the debt facility can be deployed strategically without accelerating shareholder dilution.
The financing marks a notable development for a company that has grown from a Tanzania-founded remittance app into a global stablecoin infrastructure provider, connecting businesses and consumers across the US, Europe and emerging markets. It also reflects a broader market shift: stablecoin payments, particularly in business-to-business corridors, have grown sixfold in eighteen months, with monthly volumes surpassing $30 billion by early 2026, according to data from Artemis Analytics and McKinsey cited by payments firm BVNK.
Operating From Strength, but Constrained by Growth
In a joint interview, NALA founder and CEO Benjamin Fernandes described the credit facility as a “lifeline” — not because the company was short of cash, but because its payment volumes had begun to outstrip its ability to pre-fund transactions on both sides of a corridor.
“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,” Fernandes said. “Liquidity came in quickly and were 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.”
That growth has been material. NALA’s infrastructure payments business — which operates under the B2B brand Rafiki — grew from zero to $1 billion in transaction volume within 18 months, according to company disclosures earlier this year. The company says it has grown its business 5x in the past twelve months and increased revenue 10x, driven primarily by demand for compliant stablecoin on- and off-ramps in markets where traditional correspondent banking remains slow and expensive.
Rafiki, which launched in March 2024, now powers both NALA’s consumer app and a growing roster of enterprise clients, including MoneyGram, TransferGo and Cadana. The platform connects to 249 banks and 26 mobile money services across 16 countries, effectively serving as a single API through which global businesses can pay into and out of emerging markets.
Why Credit, Not Equity
NALA’s decision to take on debt rather than raise another equity round is deliberate. The company’s 2024 Series A — a $40 million raise led by Acrew Capital, with participation from DST Global, Norrsken22, HOF Capital and angels including Ryan King and Vlad Tenev — was one of the largest such rounds for an Africa-focused fintech.
NALA said it still holds more than 50% of that capital, putting it in the unusual position of being well-capitalised on the equity side but constrained on the working-capital side.
“The financing from Liquidity validates our vision of building the definitive stablecoin payments infrastructure for the long term,” Fernandes said.
For Liquidity, the transaction represents a bet on NALA’s ability to convert its pipeline of enterprise contracts — several of which are scheduled to go live later in 2026 — into sustained, high-volume payment flows.
Paul Brodie said the firm conducted “extensive bottom-up due diligence on NALA, stress-testing the model across a range of scenarios” before creating what he described as “a bespoke, highly scalable facility that matches the sophistication of NALA’s operations.”
Justin Langen added that the firm had worked alongside NALA’s management to co-develop the credit solution “rather than relying on an off-the-shelf approach.” He said the facility was structured to “adapt as volumes grow and corridors expand.”
A Market in Overdrive
The transaction arrives amid an accelerating shift toward stablecoin-based settlement in global payments. Stablecoins processed $33 trillion in transaction volume in 2025, surpassing Visa and Mastercard combined, according to industry estimates, with B2B transactions accounting for an estimated $608 billion.
The growth has triggered a wave of funding into stablecoin infrastructure companies. Competitors including Bridge, Levl and Rain have all secured capital to build stablecoin-based payment infrastructure.
Traditional financial institutions are also moving. MUFG, the bank backing NALA’s lender through its Mars Growth joint venture, is itself developing a shared stablecoin framework with Mizuho and SMBC for corporate settlements in Japan.
Meanwhile, Circle and Nium announced on 27 May that they would connect USDC settlement to payouts in more than 190 countries through Circle Payments Network, which had reached $8.3 billion in annualised transaction volume as of March 2026.
NALA has positioned itself to capture demand at the intersection of these trends — combining stablecoin settlement speed with local payout rails and an expanding set of regulatory licences. The company now holds more than ten licences globally.
What the Capital Unlocks
The immediate use of the credit facility is straightforward: pre-funding. Cross-border payments infrastructure businesses must hold cash in multiple jurisdictions to settle transactions instantly on both ends. When volumes grow faster than the balance sheet, settlement times can degrade — precisely the problem Fernandes described as “everything broke.”
With the Liquidity facility, NALA gains the working capital to pre-fund larger enterprise customer accounts and onboard contracts already in the pipeline for the second half of 2026.
The company has not disclosed the names of those pending enterprise clients, but Fernandes previously indicated that Rafiki was closing some of the largest contracts in the company’s history, with volumes growing and corridors expanding across both Africa and Asia.
NALA has also been deepening its stablecoin infrastructure. In January 2026, the company partnered with Noah to launch a stablecoin settlement network that enables businesses to collect US dollars and pay out local currency in minutes, targeting an estimated $850 billion annual liquidity gap across Africa and Asia.
The network combines Noah’s regulated virtual USD accounts with NALA’s licensed stablecoin on- and off-ramp infrastructure, operating 24/7 and independent of local banking hours.
Risks and Questions
NALA’s growth trajectory is not without risk. The company’s expanding use of stablecoins places it at the intersection of rapidly evolving regulatory frameworks. African and Asian markets are developing digital asset rules at different speeds, and compliance requirements can shift with limited notice.
NALA’s multi-licence strategy — securing approvals from individual central banks such as the Bank of Ghana and the Bank of Uganda — provides some insulation, but each new corridor adds regulatory complexity.
There is also the question of competitive pressure. The stablecoin payments infrastructure space is becoming crowded, with well-capitalised competitors including Bridge, BVNK and Conduit all building overlapping capabilities.
NALA’s differentiation rests on its deep integration with local banking and mobile money rails in markets that remain underserved by global payment networks — a moat that depends on continued execution and licence maintenance.
The debt facility itself introduces obligations that equity does not: interest payments and eventual repayment, regardless of whether growth materialises as projected.
NALA’s management is betting that the enterprise contracts in its pipeline will generate sufficient volume to service the facility comfortably, but the company has not disclosed the specific terms or pricing of the credit arrangement.
NALA was founded in 2017 by Benjamin Fernandes as a local money transfer service in Tanzania before pivoting to foreign remittances in 2021. The company is headquartered in New York City and operates across 16 countries through its consumer app and Rafiki B2B platform. As of mid-2025, NALA had moved more than $1 billion in cumulative volume for over 500,000 users.