African Fintech Startup, NALA Integrates Apple Pay Payments From The UK And The US Into Africa

Tazanian fintech startup, NALA has integrated world payment service, Apple Pay into its payment solutions.

The fintech company has over the years been establishing its dominance in East Africa and has now taken it a notch higher by making a daring move into the fintech space on the continent with the enablement of its African diaspora users to make local payments directly.

NALA has now announced that its teeming users can now through Apple Pay make payments from the United Kingdom and the United States.

The new breakthrough by NALA is a testament to its avowed plan in enabling seamless and “lightning-fast payments” to Africa.

Developed by Apple Inc, Apple Pay is an advanced mobile payment system that digitalises card payments, while optimizing them for contactless in-store payments. The payment service which boasts of  over 45 million users in the United States alone allows easy transaction for many people in the US and UK, the countries majority of its users are.

The latest integration with Apple Play by NALA is coming after the African fintech had in early 2022 at an event in New York launched operations in the US, with the event attended by six members of the Tanzanian parliament. 

NALA’s founder and Chief Executive Officer, Benjamin Fernandes in a statement averred that the company’s recent moves are fashioned towards connecting the African continentwith global payment options, even as it builds a rich financial infrastructure for Africans.

“NALA’s mission is to increase economic opportunities for Africans globally; enabling Apple Pay is a step towards connecting more global payment options with Africa. This reach allows us to build stronger financial infrastructure for Africans worldwide”, he said.

Customers of NALA in the United Kingdom and the United States will be able to access the new Apple Play feature through the NALA app, with the feature effectively enabling payout to over 300 banks and 20 mobile money players in Africa. 

Only few African fintechs have been able to successfully integrate Apple Pay into their product and systems and NALA’s recent move is seen as placing it ahead of its contemporaries. Another African based fintech, Flutterwave had February this year promised its users that it would integrate the Apple Pay feature into its suite of payment options, but the Nigerian fintechhas not yet rolled out the service.

NALA has said its product roadmap will be accessible to all, as it posits that it would move to improve how Africans, both at home and in the diaspora, experience financial technology services.