Benjamin Fernandes built NALA until it broke under its own growth. A $50 million credit line is how he fixes that

Benjamin Fernandes started NALA in 2017 as a remittance app for the African diaspora. He spent the years since turning it into something considerably more ambitious. Then it grew faster than it could handle, and everything broke.

NALA, the Tanzanian-founded fintech Fernandes leads as founder and chief executive, has secured a credit facility of up to $50 million from Liquidity, the global AI-driven private credit firm, channeled through Mars Growth Capital, a joint venture between Liquidity and Japan's MUFG Bank. The facility starts with an initial $25 million tranche and scales to at least $50 million as transaction volumes grow. The financing is non-dilutive, meaning NALA's existing shareholders retain their stakes in full.

Fernandes was unusually candid about what triggered the need. "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 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," he said.

The problem he is describing is structural to how cross-border payments work at scale. When a business in the US wants to pay a supplier in Kenya, the payout partner in Kenya typically requires funds to be deposited locally before releasing them to the recipient. If a fintech relies on traditional clearing networks to move that capital, payments stall. To deliver the near-instant settlement that enterprise clients now expect, NALA must pre-fund pools of local currency across its destination banks before it collects from the sending side. The bigger the volume, the bigger the pre-funding requirement. Equity capital is well-suited to building products and teams. Debt is better suited to this kind of working capital need because it scales with transaction volume and avoids shareholder dilution.

NALA's network connects more than 249 banks and 26 mobile money services across 16 countries . Its consumer platform handles remittances from Europe, the UK and the US into Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda and Ghana, among other markets. Its enterprise infrastructure platform, called Rafiki, handles business-to-business stablecoin-powered collections and payouts across the same corridors and is the faster-growing side of the business. MoneyGram is already an active customer on the Rafiki platform, with additional major financial institution partnerships expected to be announced in the near future.

NALA still holds more than 50% of the $40 million equity raised in its 2024 round, meaning the Liquidity facility is being deployed for growth acceleration rather than balance sheet support. The combination of a strong equity cushion and fresh debt gives NALA a capital structure well positioned to absorb a sharp increase in enterprise onboarding. Enterprise clients seeking stablecoin-based payment rails have risen sharply over the past year, particularly among businesses moving funds between developed markets and emerging economies.

Liquidity's structuring of the deal reflects the specificity of NALA's operating model. "In NALA's case, that meant structuring a facility that can adapt as volumes grow and corridors expand, giving them the flexibility to meet rising demand without friction," said Justin Langen, director at Liquidity. "We worked closely with management to co-develop a tailored credit solution rather than relying on an off-the-shelf approach."

NALA is building toward a planned neobank platform powered by its stablecoin infrastructure, an ambition that puts it in a different category from the payments-only players it is typically compared to. The $50 million facility funds the working capital needed to get there without asking existing investors to absorb the cost of the liquidity build. Fernandes grew NALA until the infrastructure snapped. The credit line is how he rebuilds it at a scale that holds.