Benjamin Fernandes 🇹🇿

Love those around you. Those who are the hardest to love, need it the most. You don't know what they are going through. God bless you all 🙏🏻

It takes one person to believe in you.

For me, one of those people in my life was @HansMorrisSF 👇

2017 - moved back to Tanzania on a one-way ticket to build a company at 24. pivots begin.
2018 - spinning my wheels. building things that didn't pick up.
2019 - we finally got into @ycombinator on my sixth attempt. One week before Demo Day, my co-founder quit. I had to tell all our investors before they wired that i'd be building this company without a co-founder. (back then, this massively concerning)

Hans was the first institutional VC (David Sica had connected us via an intro from @dfsventures - @mrstephendeng @JakeKendall5 who gave us our first check ever)

We met at a small coffee shop in San Francisco. He told me he believed I'd figure something out, and he wanted to take the bet. Hans then invested $500K into nala.

2020. COVID hit, we received cease and decease letter from the largest mobile operator in Tanzania, the whole business pivoted (yet again). Hans was patient and supportive.

2021. We pivoted again. Hans would jump on the phone with me as i was telling him about wanting to get into cross-border payments.

he worked through scenarios, our financial design and the model with us, even when things were really really hard.

2022. Our cross-border payments business started growing fast, and Hans invested in our $10M round.

2024. He invested again in our $40M Series A. Led by @AcrewCapital and the incredible team there!

He's one of the few investors who has visited us in multiple cities and offices. Today, he came to spend time with me in London, to go over the business, financials, and share, as always, a lot of helpful advice.

Hans stood by us through some not-so-(stable)coin times.

Yesterday, one of the largest global cross-border businesses signed a contract to be our customer for global stablecoin payouts.

Thank you, Hans, and thank you, @nyca partners for believing in NALA and our team.

One believer in our ambition can change a company's whole direction. we are still a long way to go for where we want to be, we have big big plans. I wanted to give a cheers to people like Hans Morris 🙏🏽

This Manchester United 🤯

Sequoia Capital sends a message to london and europe

i'm excited to share Ashraf Aly has joined @NALAmoney as our Global Head of Compliance & Risk 🙌🏽

When you move money for banks and some of the largest payments and stablecoin companies in the world, compliance is how we earn the right to grow.

Ashraf has built compliance at:
→ @TerraPay as Group Head of Compliance for a global cross-border payments network settling with banks and wallets in 158 countries
→ @careem, as Director of Compliance at a fast-scaling emerging-markets consumer app
→ @iwoca, as Head of Compliance, MLRO and DPO at an FCA-regulated UK lender for four years 
→ PwC's Financial Services Regulatory Practice, the Financial Ombudsman Service, RateSetter and Lloyds TSB before that

Stablecoins are changing how money moves across borders, and the rules for them are being written right now. Ashraf will lead compliance and risk across NALA and @rafiki_api and our MLROs across the UK,EU, US and Canada, as we bring stablecoin settlement to more banks and payments companies.

Every bank, partner and regulator we work with trusts us with their customers’ money. Ashraf is here to make sure we keep earning that trust.

Welcome to the team, Ashraf 🚀

Building Payments for #TheNextBillion