NALA, a Tanzanian-born fintech startup with a growing dominance in East Africa, took an innovative step in the continent’s fintech industry by enabling its African diaspora users to make local payments directly. The company’s customers can now use Apple Pay to make payments from the US and the UK.
Apple Pay is an advanced mobile payment service developed by Apple Inc that digitizes card payments and is optimized for contactless store payments. With more than 45 million users in the United States alone, the payment service is a resource for many people in countries like the United States and the United Kingdom, where fintech users are concentrated.
NALA’s integration with Apple Pay comes a few months after it established its operations in the United States at the end of April 2022, where 6 Tanzanian members of parliament attended its launch event in New York City.
According to the CEO of NALA, Benjamin Fernandez“ NALA’s mission is to increase economic opportunity for Africans globally, making Apple Pay a step toward connecting more global payment options to Africa. This reach allows us to build a stronger financial infrastructure for Africans around the world..”
NALA customers in the US and UK can use the Apple Pay feature of the NALA app to make payments to more than 300 banks and 20 mobile money providers in Africa.
Only a small number of African fintech companies, such as pay stack in Nigeria and peach payments in South Africa, they have so far been able to include Apple Pay in their offerings. Nigerian fintech unicorn company Flutterwave stated in February that it would add Apple Pay support to its range of payment methods. However, that feature has yet to be released.
