Tanzanian fintech startup, NALA, has officially integrated Google Pay into its users’ payment suite options a week after it released the Apple Pay feature.
The company, which has been consistently improving on its digital platform over the past few weeks, becomes the first Tanzanian startup to enable a global payment service option for its users.
NALA provides the African diasporan community in the United States and the United Kingdom with a platform to easily make payments and send money to Africa. The company launched full operations in the US seven months ago, and with the recent integration of the Apple Pay and Google Pay features, its users can now select from a variety of globally-recognised payment options.
The development will be a huge boost to the company as these payment methods have huge popularity in the UK and the US. The company joins Flutterwave among startups to have the Google Pay option and becomes the first African startup to make it available to all its customers.
Benjamin Fernandes, founder and CEO of NALA, spoke on the Google Pay integration in an official statement in which he stated that the company’s main aim for taking this step is to connect Africa with more global payment options while building a rich financial infrastructure for Africans both home and abroad.
“NALA’s mission is to increase economic opportunities for Africans globally; enabling Google Pay is a step towards connecting more global payment options with Africa. This reach allows us to build stronger financial infrastructure for Africans worldwide,” Benjamin said in his statement.
Google Pay is a global payment gateway that facilitates easy and safe payment for its users. It is currently available in 42 countries essentially to users who own an Android device, tablet or smartwatch. Users can carry out seamless payments through the gateway as they can securely save their cards on the platform and also perform fast and easy payments to physical stores using near-field communication (NFC) technology.
The feature is available to all NALA users in the UK and US through the official NALA application, which enables swift payout to over 300 banks and 20 mobile money operators in Africa. Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda and Ghana are the five African countries that can currently receive remittances via the Google Pay gateway.
