Mambu, a Netherlands-based SaaS cloud banking platform, has announced a strategic collaboration with Nyla, described as Africa's first Islamic neobank, to power its Shari'ah-compliant digital banking infrastructure.
Nyla is launching initially in Ghana, with expansion planned across West Africa, including Nigeria, Senegal, and Gambia.
The partnership will see Nyla use Mambu's API-first, cloud-native core banking platform, hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS), to deliver digital current and savings wallets, peer-to-peer transfers, bill payments, and card-linked accounts at launch. All customer-facing transactions will be processed within Mambu's core system, while customer funds will be held with and regulated under Nyla's licensed banking partners.
Addressing an underserved market
Islamic finance represents a global market estimated at over USD 7 trillion, yet Africa accounts for just 2% of that total, despite significant demand for ethical and non-interest-based financial services across Muslim-majority and underserved communities on the continent. Nyla is positioning itself to address this gap with a digital-first model that avoids the need to build core infrastructure independently, using Mambu's composable platform to accelerate time to market.
Nyla has reported over 33,000 users on its waitlist ahead of an expected June 2026 launch, following the completion of an oversubscribed pre-seed funding round. The neobank is targeting 10,000 customer sign-ups within the first month, USD 500,000 in total transaction value processed across all products, and 400,000 total users by the end of 2026.
Over the following 24 to 36 months, Nyla plans to expand its product suite to include physical debit cards, remittances, buy now pay later functionality, Shari'ah-compliant investment instruments such as Sukuk, and a dedicated business banking offering.
Commenting on the news, Mark Geneste, Chief Revenue Officer at Mambu, said the platform is purpose-built to support Islamic and non-interest banking products, enabling institutions to innovate while maintaining compliance and operational resilience. Expanding on this, Mubarak Sumaila, CEO of Nyla, said the long-term goal is to build the largest Islamic bank in the world, starting with digital products before expanding to become the infrastructure layer for Islamic finance across Africa and beyond.
