Tala raises $145 million funding

MANILA, Philippines — Financial technology firm Tala has raised $145 million as the company aims to become the primary financial account for the global underbanked.  .

Leading artificial intelligence platform Upstart led the Series E fund raising activity of Tala with participation from the Stellar Development Foundation. Investors include Kindred Ventures and the J. Safra Group, IVP, Revolution Growth, Lowercase Capital and PayPal Ventures.

Tala chief executive officer Shivani Siroya said the new investment aims to accelerate the company’s path to becoming the primary financial account for the global underbanked and helping millions more people make progress in their financial lives.

“Tala spent the past seven years delivering critical and valued services in markets where the financial system is fundamentally broken for millions of people,” Siroya said.

Tala intends to use the investment to accelerate the rollout of its new financial account experience, which provides customers with fresh tools to borrow, save, and manage their money, all through Tala’s top-rated consumer finance app.

The fintech also aims to deploy its world-class team across the Philippines, Kenya, Mexico, India and the US and pull forward plans for both geographic and product expansion, including crypto offerings.

Tala has delivered more than $2.7 billion in credit to more than six million customers across the Philippines, Kenya, Mexico, and India. More than 12,000 new users sign up for Tala services every day.

In the Philippines, Tala has already provided service to 1.6 million Filipino borrowers through its innovative mobile application. Globally, it has received outstanding reviews from over a million users.

The fresh infusion brought Tala’s total funding to more than $350 million. The round will fuel the rollout of new mobile-first account services and crypto solutions for emerging markets.

Tala has already been testing its new product lines in early 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated demand for digital financial services. It moved quickly to meet that demand, leveraging technology the company had developed to scale its pioneering mobile credit product and bridge digital and cash ecosystems across multiple geographies.

Leveraging the Stellar network, Tala will also use the funding to develop the first mass-market crypto product for emerging markets, advancing a core promise of digital currency ecosystems by making more affordable and equitable financial tools available to populations that can benefit the most from the crypto economy.

Nearly three billion people globally are poorly served by the formal financial system, with little to no options to support their financial agency and independence.