NALA revealed that Rafiki, its stablecoin-to-fiat enterprise platform, delivered its highest monthly revenue ever.
The milestone crowns a year in which revenue climbed 10x, transaction volume surged 34x in 20 months, and cumulative flows crossed $1 billion.
What makes this moment important isn’t hype. It is proof that the global market is pivoting away from slow, expensive banking rails toward licensed stablecoin infrastructure, the “boring but indispensable” plumbing behind modern B2B payouts.
With stablecoin settlement volumes hitting $27.6 trillion in 2024 (more than Visa and Mastercard combined) and Africa’s remittances running above $100 billion, Rafiki’s growth signals a structural shift in how money moves.
NALA founder and CEO Benjamin Fernandes put it plainly: “Licensed stablecoin on- and off-ramps will be 10× more valuable in the next five years. The numbers this month prove the demand is already here.”
NALA, born in 2017 as a consumer remittance service for diaspora sending funds into East Africa, built its reputation on low fees and reliability.
By mid-2025 it had moved $1 billion for more than 500,000 users across 11 countries, becoming one of the few African fintechs to reach profitability before raising its $40 million Series A (2024).
But the company’s real turning point came in 2023 when internal frustrations and 15% payment failure rates from third-party partners pushed NALA to build its own infrastructure.
The result was Rafiki, launched as a B2B API allowing global firms to accept stablecoins like USDC, USDT and PYUSD, convert them to 50+ local currencies, and settle to wallets or bank accounts across Africa, the UK, the EU and the US.
Think of Rafiki as the compliant, licensed bridge between stablecoins and real-world payout networks such as M-PESA, East African banks, SEPA and ACH. No exchanges, no multi-hop delays, just instant settlement with predictable costs.
READ ALSO:How NALA Is Cracking Kenya’s $4.9B Remittance Market with Real-Time Transfers
How Rafiki Works and Why It’s Winning
Rafiki’s model is deceptively simple: plug a single API into your treasury or payout system, receive or send stablecoins, and let Rafiki handle the conversion into local currencies via fully regulated ramps.
For businesses that live or die by cash-flow timing including payroll firms, remittance companies, gig platforms, exporters the difference is huge.
| Feature | Legacy B2B (SWIFT/Banks) | Rafiki (Stablecoin Rail) | What It Means for Users |
|---|---|---|---|
| Speed | 3–5 days | <60 seconds | Workers get paid instantly; suppliers avoid cash-flow shocks |
| Cost | ~6.5% on avg | 1–2% | Saves $650M per $10B in flows; treasury earns 4–5% yield on idle USDC |
| Compliance | Heavy KYC/AML; opaque FX spreads | Licensed ramps (FCA, EU EMI); audit trails | Enterprise-grade transparency without touching exchanges |
| Reach | Patchy Africa coverage | Local fiat + global stablecoin corridors | Reliable cross-continent payouts for diaspora and remote teams |
The Signal Beneath the Surge: Stablecoins Are Becoming Infrastructure
Global B2B payments worth $120 trillion annually suffer from a chronic problem: slow settlement traps an estimated $1.6 trillion in “dead capital” at any given time.
Stablecoins solve this by providing 24/7 finality, programmable money movement, and FX transparency.
2024’s $27.6 trillion stablecoin settlement number confirmed the shift; 2025’s boom in tokenised treasuries and corporate crypto payrolls pushed it into the mainstream.
Rafiki sits squarely in this transformation: not a crypto exchange, not a speculative platform, but a regulated liquidity highway that global firms can trust.
Fernandes’ argument that stablecoin ramps will be “10× more valuable” within five years reflects the same logic that turned cloud hosting from an experiment into a global backbone.
Rafiki’s trajectory isn’t smooth. Regulatory instability remains a factor. Kenya’s sandbox is encouraging; Nigeria’s stop-start crypto bans are not. Large incumbents like dLocal and Airwallex eye Africa’s corridors.
And scaling treasury operations across 50+ currencies carries operational risk.
But NALA has two advantages rivals don’t:
• First-mover traction in Africa, where legacy failure rates reached 70% in some corridors
• A licensed, compliant model, avoiding the regulatory pitfalls of unregulated exchanges
With $40 million in growth capital, NALA is already pushing Rafiki into Asia and the Middle East, widening its lead. And if November’s numbers are any indication, the world’s treasury desks are finally noticing.
NALA Overview
Nala Rafiki app is part of the broader NALA money ecosystem, which has rapidly expanded through NALA Kenya and continued NALA funding rounds.
Rafiki Payments is the company’s new payment infrastructure layer powering cross-border transactions, with Rafiki payment in Kenya enabling faster local settlement.
The Rafiki payment app supports businesses and fintech partners, while Rafiki by NALA aims to simplify global-to-local money movement across Africa.
Ronnie Paul is a seasoned writer and analyst with a prolific portfolio of over 1,000 published articles, specialising in fintech, cryptocurrency, climate change, and digital finance at Africa Digest News.
Leave a Reply