For the second year in a row, NALA, the African fintech from Tanzania, has been one of the ‘Forbes Fintech 50 of the Year.
NALA’s inclusion in the Forbes 50 Fintech of the Year list wasn’t simply about user growth or brand popularity. According to NALA CEO, the recognition reflected a strategic shift from being a consumer-facing remittance app to becoming a payments provider with real-world utility for global companies underpinned by a stablecoin infrastructure.
According to the CEO, Benjamin Fernandes:
“Behind the scenes, the business has evolved significantly. We’re increasingly operating as stablecoin-enabled payments infrastructure improving settlement speed, reliability, and unit economics across global corridors to emerging markets across Africa and Asia.
RAFIKI, our B2B platform, is also closing some of the largest contracts in our history as more global companies (including MoneyGram etc.) look for better stablecoin rails to move money into emerging markets. Volumes are growing, corridors are expanding, and the fundamentals of the business are getting stronger each quarter.
Grateful to our incredible customers, our team across product, engineering, treasury, compliance, and operations who are building regulated, resilient infrastructure every single day.”
FINTECH AFRICA | NALA, One of Africa’s Leading Fintechs with Over 1 Million Active Users, is Building an On-Off-Ramp for Stablecoins
Central to NALA’s evolution, and likely a major factor in the Forbes accolade, was the development of Rafiki, the company’s stablecoin-enabled settlement platform. Rafiki contributed to the recognition in several meaningful ways:
) Turning Stablecoins Into Real-World Settlement Rails Rafiki isn’t about asking users to adopt a new digital token. Instead, it leverages stablecoins under the hood as a settlement mechanism. This allows dollar-denominated value to move instantly between global payers and local recipients while staying fully compliant with financial regulations.
) Solving Traditional Pain Points in Cross-Border Finance Legacy correspondent banking systems can take days to settle payments and often charge high fees. Rafiki’s architecture dramatically reduces these delays and costs by converting USD to stablecoin, moving value in real time, and settling into local fiat — all while recording compliance and audit trails.
) Enabling Enterprise Use Cases at Scale Businesses – from marketplaces to payroll platforms to global treasury teams – need predictable settlement, liquidity management, and rapid payouts. Rafiki enables this through APIs designed for integration into existing workflows, removing barriers that traditional rails couldn’t solve.
) Attracting Strategic Adoption from Global Players Partners like MoneyGram, which have already explored blockchain-enabled payout models in markets like Kenya, show why Rafiki’s design matters: it lets established players combine regulatory compliance with next-generation settlement speed and cost efficiency.
) Positioning NALA at the Frontier of Regulated Stablecoin Infrastructure Rafiki demonstrates that stablecoins can be more than speculative assets – they can be regulated plumbing for real payments. This aligns with broader industry shifts (such as other fintech leaders publicly adopting stablecoin-based settlement infrastructure) and positions NALA as a pioneer in this space.
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NALA made the Forbes 50 list not because it used blockchain technology, but because it harnessed it in a way that solved real, regulated, high-impact financial problems.
Rafiki, the stablecoin rail at the heart of this strategy, turned theoretical promise into practical results, enabling faster, compliant, and cost-efficient settlement for businesses operating across borders. That combination of innovation and pragmatic impact is precisely what earned NALA its place among the 2026 top fintech companies globally.
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