Nala

Nala holds customer funds in US dollar-backed stablecoins and settles payouts using a combination of local bank and mobile-money rails, plus stablecoin-enabled settlement via partners. In February 2024 the firm announced a partnership with MoneyGram, giving it access to MoneyGram's global payout network without requiring pre-funded correspondent accounts. This architecture lets Nala deliver 98% of transfers within ten minutes, and instant delivery to mobile wallets in markets like Kenya, Ghana and Nigeria.

Rafiki is Nala's embedded-finance API for global payouts and collections. It lets businesses move money across the US, UK, Europe, Asia and Africa, settling in either local currency or stablecoins. The product competes with cross-border payment API providers by offering real-time FX rate transparency and a single endpoint to disburse into multiple developing-market payment systems.

Nala is a cross-border payments company — not a family office, nor an asset manager in the sense of managing third-party investment portfolios. Altss profiles of payments infrastructure firms are maintained because family offices and allocators frequently engage with fintech companies as co-investors, LP-into-fund relationships, or via direct venture-allocations, but Nala itself does not manage external investor capital.

Nala currently supports senders in 20 European countries, the United States and the United Kingdom, and receivers in twelve African and four Asian countries — with plans to expand. The firm does not serve sender corridors originating in most of Latin America, the Middle East, or APAC ex-India and Philippines, though no public policy statement explicitly rules them out.

Nala states that user balances are held in US dollar-backed stablecoins, fully reserved and protected by institutional-grade security. The firm has not publicly identified its custody partners or the specific regulatory regimes under which the stablecoin reserves are held.