Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)<\/a> as a strategic base for facilitating trade between Central Africa and Asia. Rather than treating cross-border payments as a secondary service, the fintech is building infrastructure designed to help businesses collect money locally, access foreign currency and pay suppliers internationally.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe opportunity is substantial. Trade between China and the DRC reached $26.7 billion in 2025, with China importing $21.6 billion worth of goods from the DRC and exporting $5.1 billion to the country. Much of this trade is connected to the DRC\u2019s large mining industry, particularly copper and cobalt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For businesses operating along these corridors, moving money can be as challenging as moving goods. Currency shortages, fragmented banking systems, intermediary banks and slow settlement can increase costs and delay transactions. Nomba\u2019s strategy is to address these gaps by combining local payment infrastructure with international banking relationships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The company entered the DRC in 2025, initially focusing on remittances and building an agent network. Its ambitions have since expanded toward business-to-business payments and trade settlement. Through its DRC infrastructure, businesses can collect payments through bank accounts and payment channels and use those funds to pay suppliers in Asia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nomba says it currently processes more than $480 million in cross-border payments each month across its DRC operations and Canadian-licensed money service business. The company is targeting more than $1 billion in monthly cross-border payment volume, making the new financing an important part of its expansion strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The fintech is also looking beyond the DRC. Zambia and Uganda are among the markets on its expansion roadmap, with the company seeking to use established trade corridors as entry points before building deeper local operations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The decision to use debt rather than equity is also significant. Debt financing can provide growth capital without immediately diluting existing shareholders, while giving Nomba liquidity specifically for transaction flows and international settlement. The company has indicated that it plans to raise an additional $20 million to $50 million in debt in stages as it scales the business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For Nomba, the bigger opportunity is not simply moving money between Africa and Asia. It is becoming part of the financial infrastructure that supports African companies as they trade globally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As African businesses increasingly source goods from Asian suppliers and sell commodities and services into international markets, reliable payment rails will become increasingly important. Nomba\u2019s latest financing suggests the company wants to be one of the platforms powering that growth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nigerian fintech Nomba is strengthening its ambitions beyond domestic payments after securing a $3 million debt facility to expand its cross-border payment infrastructure and connect African businesses more efficiently with Asian markets. The facility, provided by CardinalStone Finance Company Limited, will give Nomba additional US dollar liquidity through banking relationships in Hong Kong and Singapore….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/techstream.africa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/techstream.africa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/techstream.africa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techstream.africa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techstream.africa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8545"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/techstream.africa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8546,"href":"https:\/\/techstream.africa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8545\/revisions\/8546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/techstream.africa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techstream.africa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techstream.africa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}