On April 25, 2018, Tricia Martinez, the Wala CEO, announced the company’s expansion to Uganda, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.
This was through Wala’s official medium account. The expansion, Martinez wrote, will enable Wala “tackle financial exclusion affecting 1.3 Billion people.”
“ Wala, the blockchain-powered financial services platform and launch partner of Dala cryptocurrency, has announced that it is now live in three markets, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Uganda,” Martinez wrote.
Wala, a payments, and remittances company, will now enable “the world’s first borderless, rewards-driven, zero-fee financial platform, users in these three countries can access remittance, savings, value-added services, and credit services powered by the Dala cryptocurrency via their smartphones” in the three countries.
“This launch is a giant leap in the right direction to solve a problem that impacts almost half of the global population.”
According to Martinez’s post, it seems the company is still harboring growth ambitions. With the possibility of expanding to more markets in the near future.
“Wala is now live in three markets, and through an aggressive growth strategy that includes pre-installing Wala on smartphones numbering in the 10’s of millions through an engagement with Spire, will be live in an additional eight markets before year-end,” Martinez wrote.
Wala describes itself as a “mobile financial services platform built on the Ethereum blockchain.”
According to its CrunchBase profile, last year, the company raised two rounds of funding with the last one being an Initial Coin offering, ICO, in December that brought in US $1.2 Million.
While the details of the Venture round that it raised from Newton Partners in October weren't disclosed, prior to that, Wala had raised a seed round from two undisclosed investors in January 2016.