Nigerian fintech Nomba has raised a $3 million debt facility from CardinalStone Finance Company Limited, the financing arm of CardinalStone Group, to grow its cross-border payments infrastructure across Central Africa.
Fresh Capital for Cross-Border Liquidity
The new facility gives Nomba more US dollar liquidity to deploy through its banking relationships in Hong Kong and Singapore. With more currency liquidity on hand, the company says it can support a higher volume of transactions, settle payments faster, and both deepen its existing trade corridors and open new ones.
The funding arrives against the backdrop of growing trade ties between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Asia, particularly China. Trade between China and the DRC reached $26.7 billion in 2025, with China importing $21.6 billion worth of goods from the DRC while exporting $5.1 billion in the other direction. That volume of commercial activity is the opportunity Nomba is positioning itself to serve, as demand for reliable payment rails between the two regions continues to rise.
From Remittances to a Regional Ambition
Nomba’s presence in the DRC dates back to November 2025, when it formally announced its entry after operating quietly in the market for months. The initial focus was remittances, built around a network of physical agents handling inflows from high-volume corridors including China and Dubai. The DRC was framed at the time as a foothold into Central Africa more broadly.
That ambition has since grown. Over the past 18 months, Nomba has combined its banking partnerships with on-the-ground operations to tackle currency access and settlement bottlenecks that typically slow cross-border trade. Through its DRC product, businesses can now collect payments online or via point-of-sale terminals, accept card and mobile money payments, and pay suppliers in Asia directly.
Nomba’s CEO framed the new facility as both a liquidity boost and a vote of confidence in the company’s cross-border strategy, adding that the plan is to keep expanding into new African markets this year while strengthening payment links between Africa and its trading partners in Asia. CardinalStone’s managing director for its finance arm echoed that sentiment, describing the transaction as a reflection of confidence in the growth potential of cross-border payments infrastructure on the continent.
A Track Record of Scaling Through Debt and Equity
Nomba, founded in 2017 as Kudi.AI, an AI chatbot that helped users make online payments, later pivoted into agency banking before evolving into a full payments and banking services provider for businesses. It raised $30 million in a pre-Series B round in 2023, a round that valued the company above $150 million and funded its push into business banking products.
The company has also leaned on debt financing to fuel expansion. In April, Nomba 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 those loans turning non-performing, a track record that likely factored into CardinalStone’s decision to extend fresh debt capital now.
With this latest facility, Nomba is signalling that its next phase of growth will be defined less by domestic payment collection and more by its ability to move money reliably between African businesses and their trading partners in Asia.
