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Nomba, a Nigerian fintech providing payment collection and banking services to businesses, has secured a $3 million debt facility from CardinalStone Finance Company Limited, the financing arm of CardinalStone Group, to expand its cross-border payments infrastructure across Central Africa.
The facility will provide Nomba with additional US dollar liquidity through its banking relationships in Hong Kong and Singapore, allowing the fintech to support higher transaction volumes and settle payments across multiple currencies.
Nomba said the increased liquidity will help it deepen existing payment corridors, improve settlement capacity and establish new links between African businesses and their international trading partners.
Nomba targets growing Africa–Asia trade
The fundraising comes as commercial ties between the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Asian markets, particularly China, continue to expand.
Trade between China and the DRC reached $26.7 billion in 2025, comprising $21.6 billion in Chinese imports from the DRC and $5.1 billion in exports to the country.
For Nomba, the scale of this trade represents an opportunity to provide payment infrastructure for businesses operating across the corridor, particularly as companies seek more reliable ways to manage currency access and cross-border settlements.
“This facility gives us more room to move — more liquidity, more corridors, faster settlement,” said Yinka Adewale, Nomba’s chief executive officer.
“It’s also a strong signal of confidence in what we’re building for the next generation of African businesses. 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.”
From Kudi.AI to cross-border financial infrastructure
Nomba was founded in 2017 as Kudi.AI, an AI chatbot designed to help users process online payments. The company introduced an agency banking solution in 2018 before evolving into a broader provider of payment and banking services for businesses.
The fintech generates revenue by charging fees on transactions processed through its platform.
In 2023, Nomba raised $30 million in a pre-Series B funding round that valued the company at more than $150 million. The funding supported its expansion into additional business banking products.
The company has since increasingly focused on building infrastructure that enables businesses to collect payments and manage financial transactions across markets.
DRC becomes gateway to Central Africa
Nomba entered the DRC in November 2025 after operating quietly in the market for several months.
Its initial offering focused on remittances, with the company recruiting physical agents to facilitate inflows from high-volume corridors, including China and Dubai.
Nomba described the DRC as its entry point into Central Africa, using remittance flows to establish an initial market presence.
The company has since broadened its ambitions, combining local operations with banking relationships to address currency access and settlement challenges affecting cross-border trade.
Through its DRC offering, businesses can collect payments online or via point-of-sale terminals, accept card and mobile money payments, and use the platform to pay suppliers in Asian markets.
Fintech seeks to build new payment corridors
The latest financing is expected to support Nomba’s efforts to establish additional trade corridors across Africa.
The company said it has already begun piloting a DRC-to-Zambia corridor, while identifying business-to-business (B2B) payment opportunities connecting the DRC with Uganda, Kenya and Angola.
Rather than establishing a full local presence in every market immediately, Nomba said it plans to use cross-border transaction demand to identify viable corridors before determining whether deeper market expansion is warranted.
Ayoola Adeola, managing director of CardinalStone Finance, said the transaction reflects confidence in the growth potential of cross-border payments and the role financial infrastructure can play in connecting African businesses with international markets.
“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,” Adeola said.
Nomba scales credit and payments infrastructure
The new debt facility builds on Nomba’s broader efforts to expand access to financial services for businesses.
In April, the company disclosed that an 18-month credit partnership with Globus Bank had disbursed up to $15.3 million to Nigerian businesses, with less than 1% of the loans classified as non-performing.
Nomba said its cross-border operations currently process more than $480 million in payments each month across its DRC business and Canadian-licensed money service business.
The company plans to raise a further $20 million to $50 million in debt in stages as it expands its capacity to facilitate cross-border trade.
The additional financing is expected to support Nomba’s longer-term target of processing $1 billion in monthly payments as it builds payment links between African markets and major global trading hubs.
The expansion highlights the growing importance of liquidity, settlement infrastructure and regulatory access in enabling African businesses to participate more efficiently in cross-border trade.
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