Nomba raises $3 million debt facility to scale Africa-Asia cross-border payments

Nomba, the Lagos-headquartered fintech startup, has raised a $3 million debt facility through CardinalStone Finance Company Limited to expand its cross-border payments infrastructure.

The company announced the fundraising in a statement shared with Nairametrics on Thursday.

According to the company, the facility will be used to scale its cross-border payments infrastructure out of the Democratic Republic of Congo, as it targets more than $1 billion in monthly cross-border payment volume.

The funding gives Nomba additional US dollar liquidity to deploy through its banking relationships in Hong Kong and Singapore, positioning its DRC operations as a settlement hub for trade between Central Africa and Asia.

What they are saying

Nomba CEO Yinka Adewale said the facility created room to move more liquidity across more corridors at faster settlement speeds, while signalling wider confidence in the company’s infrastructure play.

• “African businesses are trading more with the rest of the world every year, but the infrastructure to support that trade is still catching up. This facility gives us more room to move — more liquidity, more corridors, faster settlement. It’s also a strong signal of confidence in what we’re building for the next generation of African businesses,” he said.
• “We plan to keep scaling our cross-border infrastructure this year, expanding into new African markets and deepening the payment links between Africa and its trading partners in Asia,” he added.

CardinalStone Finance MD Ayoola Adeola said the transaction reflected confidence in both the cross-border payments opportunity and Nomba’s specific positioning within it.

• “This transaction reflects our confidence in the growth opportunity presented by cross-border payments, and the role innovative financial infrastructure can play in connecting African businesses to global markets. We are pleased to have structured this $3 million debt facility to support Nomba’s expansion as it builds capacity across key Africa-Asia trade corridors,” he said.

Nomba said cross-border trade is one of the fastest-growing parts of the African economy, but the payment infrastructure supporting it has not kept pace, with funds getting stuck, currency access proving unreliable, and settlement times running into days.

Over the past 18 months, the company said it has built infrastructure combining banking rails, global payment access, and local market knowledge to address that gap, allowing businesses to move money across borders as easily as they move it domestically.

• Nomba is using its DRC business as a bridge into Central and East Africa, with Zambia and Uganda identified as its next expansion markets.
• The company is also preparing to raise a further $20 million to $50 million in the coming months to fund additional growth across its cross-border infrastructure.

Get up to speed

Nomba’s latest debt raise builds on several years of expansion from an agency banking fintech into a broader payments and business banking infrastructure company.

• In 2023, Nomba raised $30 million in a Pre-Series B funding round led by Base10 Partners, with participation from Helios Digital Ventures, Shopify, Partech and Khosla Ventures.

At the time, the company said the funding would support the expansion of its payment solutions to businesses in Nigeria and across Africa.

• Nomba has also expanded its relationships with traditional financial institutions as it scales. In October 2025, the company said its collaboration with Globus Bank had processed ₦1 trillion in transactions and was on track to reach ₦10 trillion within 12 months, highlighting the growing role of its infrastructure in business payments.
• The company has since continued to deepen its payment infrastructure. In January 2026, Nairametrics reported that virtual accounts accounted for 75% of all business payment transactions processed through Nomba’s API platform in 2025.

The latest $3 million debt facility therefore represents another step in that evolution, but with a stronger international focus.

What you should know

Nomba’s expansion comes as the push to make cross-border payments more seamless becomes increasingly important to Africa’s digital economy.

Nairametrics reported in June that payment fragmentation across Africa is slowing the continent’s digital economy, according to Maplerad CEO Olalekan Jamiu.

He said fragmented payment systems make it harder for businesses to move money across borders and highlighted the need for greater interoperability between financial infrastructure across the continent.