Today, I spoke at Eric Newcomer’s Breaking the Bank Summit in San Francisco where I had the chance to weigh in on the future of fintech. It was an opportunity to reflect on how Tala has evolved and grown over the last decade – from a company that started with a mission of delivering financial services to customers with limited access to the emerging digital economy, to a company that has built a vertically integrated financial services platform powered by a deep moat of proprietary data and scaled AI infrastructure. 

And it was a chance to look ahead. To understand the scale of what we’re building, here are some stats:

• Over 10 million customers served to date 
• $6 billion in credit originations to date 
• 92% repayment rate 
• Credit decisions in <2 seconds
• And, once approved, cash disbursements in <3 minutes (for most customers) 
• Operations across 3 continents

Most significantly, we’ve proven that serving a population that nobody else has dared to serve creates significant impact and financial value — Tala has reached an annualized revenue run rate of $300 million as of Q1 2025, building on a 3-year revenue CAGR of 35%. 

For anyone who knows me, you know that I am simply obsessed with data and economic systems — leveraging new data in unexpected ways has been my life’s work, from my early career as a banking analyst to my time with the United Nations Population Fund. I founded Tala with a simple thesis that rings true to this day: there is an enormous amount of alternative data that can be leveraged to serve billions of people around the world. 

The reality in financial services is that most legacy institutions — and even many fintechs and neobanks — remain stuck in outdated and static ways of understanding people. They rely on dominant tools like FICO, a score that was first established in 1989. To prove our thesis, Tala decided to tackle the credit system holistically —  combining the intelligence of a credit bureau, the payments execution of a fintech and the relationship expertise of a bank into one integrated solution. 

And rather than focusing on “typical” indicators of creditworthiness — like payment history, amounts owed, length of credit history, credit mix, and any new credit — we built an entirely new approach based on our customers’ mobile footprints and the proprietary data they generated through their relationship with Tala. Through this data, we identified patterns and used them as proxies for consistency, liquidity, and responsibility. Today, more than 10 years later, our credit models are trained on billions of data points across 3 distinct geographies — and our data moat is rapidly expanding as our customer base grows. 

Through our strategic scaling of data and AI/ML infrastructure, we have created a dynamic global financial platform that has the potential to serve any person in any country — and that will enable massive volume and scale over the next few years. We have deliberately chosen a multi-region expansion strategy to prove the power of our technology and data. And we have a talented team in place to lead us forward. 

• Kelly Uphoff is entering her fourth year as Tala’s CTO, applying her expertise building Netflix’s recommendation engine and leading a technology team with deep expertise in generative AI, causal inference, and customer engagement. 
• We’ve welcomed Nicolas Cabrera as our new Chief Product Officer, whose experience across fintech, crypto, and payments — including most recently Lightspark, where he introduced Universal Money Address (UMA) — make him a phenomenal addition to our leadership team as we look ahead to Tala’s future vision.
• And, in the last year, we’ve welcomed Mike Olson as COO and Damier Xandrine as Chief Legal Officer to help steer us through this period of dynamic growth. 

As we move towards the next horizon, I am inspired by the opportunities to rapidly replicate our infrastructure across diverse markets, diverse customer bases, and new products – something we are avidly working on and uniquely positioned to leverage because of the depth of our proprietary data. Each new technology wave — from the ubiquity of mobile phones and the internet to crypto and now to AI — has provided Tala with a new set of tools to understand and reach what I believe to be the largest untapped TAM in consumer fintech — the 4 billion people around the world who don’t have equal access to the existing financial system — the population that we at Tala call the Global Majority.

The Tala team has a ton of momentum, and it is my hope that our fintech peers are as inspired and excited by the future as we are. Our vision feels more urgent and more vital than ever before given today’s macro and political insecurity — and I’ve always believed we can make more progress working with others than on our own.

The post The 2025 State of Tala: Building a Global Financial Infrastructure Company  appeared first on Tala.

Our mission at Tala is to unleash the economic power of the Global Majority, and over the last 10 years, we have aimed to leverage best-in-class technology to meet the changing needs of our customers. Our tech stack started with Android technology and now includes AI and blockchain in pursuit of our mission.

Last year, we launched the Tala Crypto Wallet as a pilot program with Stellar’s blockchain technology to test our hypothesis of stablecoins’ benefits in emerging markets. After a successful start to this program, we wanted to share more about the efforts that led to this product and what the future holds.

Why Stablecoins

As we started building our crypto wallet, we knew we wanted to focus on stablecoins because of their utility and benefits. Stablecoins are digital assets designed to maintain a stable value, usually by tying their price to a fiat currency like the U.S. dollar. They typically achieve this stability by maintaining a reserve of that same currency so the stablecoin can be redeemed 1:1 for the fiat equivalent. Because they are designed to maintain a consistent value, stablecoins are more suitable for transactions than volatile cryptocurrencies – particularly for our customers who have little margin for risk.

Stablecoins also allow programmable and near-instant transactions – potentially across different fiat currencies – to occur 24/7, 365 days a year, without geographic restrictions and at a fraction of the cost of traditional financial institutions. This allows stablecoins to provide many of the benefits of blockchain technology, like speed, cost savings, and increased access, while limiting the drawbacks of price volatility. 

While that might not sound like a revolutionary concept on the surface, the implications are substantial. This eliminates the need for many traditional intermediaries, like banks, which often charge high fees, take 2-3 days to process a single transaction, limit access to underserved populations, and are only open during specific time windows during the week – something people in emerging markets can’t afford with both time and money. 

Launching a Crypto Wallet

When we examined what digital asset and blockchain technology could uniquely offer our customers, we focused on three areas: self-custody, reduced transaction costs, and interoperability. 

Self-Custody: One of our core principles at Tala is empowering individuals with financial autonomy through technology. Guided by that principle, we knew we wanted to give our customers complete control of their private keys through a self-custody (non-custodial) wallet to ensure the customer always retains ownership of his or her assets.

However, one of the challenges of a non-custodial wallet is that it can be confusing and difficult to use, especially for someone new to digital currency. To solve this, we purposefully designed our wallet with a simplified user interface and built-in redundancies to provide recovery options for our customers in case a device is lost or stolen (something that is atypical with non-custodial wallets). Our goal is to keep the benefits of self-custody, while ensuring the wallet remains easy to use and understand.

Reducing Transaction Costs: Historically, low-volume digital transactions involving small amounts of money have been cost-prohibitive, resulting in larger financial institutions avoiding offering such services – forcing individuals to deal in cash. With stablecoins and blockchain technology, transaction costs are significantly reduced and can now be viably facilitated digitally. This is especially true when it comes to cross-border payments and remittances. The potential benefits to financial inclusion are therefore substantial, as low-income individuals have access to digital finance and the digital economy, often for the first time.

Interoperability: To ensure the product could scale to new markets and leverage new technology as the industry continues to evolve, we made interoperability a core focus. Interoperability not only allows our customers to access a stablecoin version of their local currency, but also convert it into other stablecoin currencies like the U.S. dollar (USDC) or the Euro (EURC). This is particularly useful for crossborder transactions, and individuals in emerging markets with highly volatile or devaluing currencies. 

Bringing Blockchain to Latin America

According to the World Bank Global Findex Database, Latin American countries have seen significant growth in individual ownership of an account at a bank or regulated institution such as a credit union, or a mobile money service provider. Despite this increase in account adoption, roughly half of Spanish-speaking South America – approximately 67 million adults – lack access to formal credit. We’re addressing the region’s unique financial challenges with an easy-to-use crypto wallet that provides access to affordable credit while enabling other useful digital wallet capabilities.

Digital payments are a significant benefit of stablecoin and blockchain technology, but providing access to affordable credit is even more of a game-changer. The global majority uses short-term credit for a range of needs – from paying bills and school tuition to handling medical emergencies or starting businesses. So far, we’re seeing customers use our crypto wallet to borrow and move money in and out of their accounts for day-to-day needs. They use stablecoins like any other currency in a digital wallet, but with the ability to access credit where they previously could not.

Results from our pilot also show that many of our borrowers are micro-entrepreneurs using the capital we’re originating on the blockchain to operate their small businesses. For those who transact primarily in cash, digital assets can also serve as a safer way to save and store money.

What’s Ahead

Crypto is often associated with the global elite, but its greatest potential lies with the global majority. As we continue to develop digital asset products in Latin America, we hope to bring them to other markets to expand global financial health and provide the underbanked with access to transformative technologies that have long been kept out of their reach.

The post How Stablecoins are Paving the Way for Global Financial Inclusion and Health appeared first on Tala.

Here’s a snapshot of our biggest highlights in 2023:

We launched the Tala Wallet and quickly gained over a million customers. 

The Tala Wallet has equipped more than 1.1M customers since our official launch in April with access to borrow money, store money, pay bills, and send and receive cash instantly and seamlessly — all from their mobile phones. With these real-time money management features, customers gain the power to govern their own finances and establish financial stability.

We entered a new era of agile machine learning model delivery.

This year, we rebuilt our data + AI tooling platform to take full advantage of Tala’s proprietary data sets and enable Tala to continue expanding financial access and grow customer lifetime value. Now, end-to-end credit approval decisions for Tala customers, from application submission to decision, take less than three seconds. Advanced models for credit and fraud learn in real-time, meaning Tala can adapt quickly to changing customer needs and data availability. These advancements mean we are poised to scale rapidly and develop new advancements. 

We crossed a new milestone of over 8 million customers worldwide!

In the first half of 2023, Tala gained over 800,000 new customers — a 114% increase compared to the first six months of 2022. Tala’s now more than eight million customers access nearly $100 million in origination per month. Tala bridges digital and cash ecosystems to help customers seamlessly manage their financial lives, processing nearly $200 million in transactions monthly.

We earned accolades for our innovation and excellence — and used those moments to advance the economic power of the global majority.

Tala was recognized for our industry leadership and innovation to make financial services more accessible around the world. Shivani Siroya championed the global majority on stages from the World Economic Forum to Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech. We were also named one of CNBC’s Disruptor 50 companies for the fourth consecutive year and one of Forbes’ Top 50 Fintech companies in the world for the seventh consecutive year. 

We’re building a safer industry by empowering customers through education.

From partnering with CONDUSEF to make digital financial tools more widely available to monthly financial literacy workshops across our markets, we believe financial education is crucial for unleashing the economic power of the global majority. These measures together create a proven ecosystem of agency and access: we found that customers’ financial health increases as they use Tala, and they feel more confident about their future.

Over the course of 2023, Tala made significant strides to unleash the economic power of the global majority. We are harnessing the best of next-generation technologies to build trusted, real-world financial solutions. We can’t wait to show you what we have in store for 2024.

The post Tala’s Year in Review appeared first on Tala.

Even so, there’s a critical piece of the conversation missing. Much of the research and dialogue devoted to lending and economic development focuses on “productive” lending, defined as loans used for business investments or growth. This can imply that the inverse — ”consumptive” lending — is counter-productive. We argue that this view overlooks the significant role that so-called “consumptive”, or personal loans, can play in building financial stability and enabling growth. 

In reality, the financial needs of borrowers in the informal economy can’t so neatly be categorized as “productive” or “consumptive.” In fact, our customers’ productive and consumptive needs are actually intertwined. Our data shows that just 10% of customers borrow solely for consumptive purposes throughout their relationship with Tala; 90% take mixed-use loans as they go through their life. What may be seen as traditionally consumptive spending actually creates the conditions for more productive activities. 

Broadening the definition of productive lending to drive financial growth

Consumptive loans refer to loans used for the goods and services that individuals and households buy for everyday use, such as groceries, household bills, and other necessities. When individuals and households have access to credit to make these necessary purchases, it allows them to free up their income for other activities. 

Take, for example, our customer May. She is a single mother in the Philippines. As the main earner for her family, she was struggling to make ends meet and used Tala loans to pay her bills and make sure her family had what they needed to survive. Over time, May began using her Tala loan to fund her business, selling local delicacies. With added stability and cash flow, customers like May evolve their loan use.  While their loans may begin as what is traditionally labeled “consumptive,” they are critical to developing customers’ financial growth and agency. 

According to a sample from a third-party survey we commissioned, 40% of loans from Philippines customers would be considered “productive loans.” Looking closer, however, we found over 50% of these loans would more aptly be categorized as mixed-use for both business and household needs. The remaining “consumptive” loans were used for school fees, medical services, and other essential needs like rent, groceries, and utilities.

Such purchases are often undervalued by researchers who simply distinguish between loans that generate income and those that don’t, thus ignoring the value of indirect outcomes. Liquidity to cover medical expenses means better health and more employable days. Spending on childcare can enable parents, particularly mothers (more on this below), to participate in the labor market, increasing hours, productivity, and earnings. And, at a basic level, the costs of shelter and education prohibit progress toward long-term financial growth. Loans for any of these purposes would be traditionally labeled as consumptive; they’re also entirely necessary. 

Unlocking economic opportunities for women

This broader definition of productive loans can have a particularly significant impact on women in emerging markets who are more financially vulnerable and are disproportionately impacted by restrictive loan use than men. Women are less likely to be financially resilient, historically less likely to have access to financial services, and yet often bear the burden of household responsibilities — carrying out at least two and a half times more unpaid household and care work than men, according to the UN. Research has found when women do have access to financial accounts, they tend to spend more than men on food, education, and health care, increasing the welfare and productivity of their families. By providing women with access to necessary loans — including consumptive or mixed-use loans — we’re unlocking their potential.

Increasing financial agency through trust

At Tala, we believe in empowering our customers to put their capital to work to achieve whatever goals matter most to them. With additional liquidity from mixed-used loans, customers are enabled to take control of their financial lives and well-being. Customers like Christine, a single mother in Manila who grew her business and increased her income, or Caroline in Kenya, who grew her e-commerce business and now feels secure in her future. We’ve helped students like Sahari pay for things while she gets her degree. 

Ultimately, a more holistic approach to lending and building financial agency for the underbanked is needed across the industry, one that recognizes the interconnectedness of all economic activities and the importance of supporting individuals and households as well as businesses. Lending with a broader understanding of “productive” loans is one step towards this more encompassing approach. It helps individuals and households meet their basic needs while also creating conditions for more productive activities. By expanding access to credit for these purchases, we can help to build a more equitable and sustainable economy, one that benefits everyone, not just those who already have access to traditional financial systems.

The post Redefining Success in Lending: The Role of Mixed-Use Loans in Economic Growth appeared first on Tala.

Access to Financial Services

Underserved customers have the capability to grow their financial lives, but don’t always have access to the tools they need. Nearly two-thirds of borrowers surveyed reported they did not have prior access to a service like Tala and reported accessing a digital loan for the first time. As we expand our product offerings this year, more people will be able to access digital loans and other financial services — services unattainable or unavailable elsewhere. Already, four in five reported not being able to find a good alternative to Tala’s digital loans. This is a customer base that is consistently underserved but has so much potential. According to this study, a majority of Tala’s customers who take out a loan reported making less than $6.33 a day. We’re dedicated to enabling more opportunities for the financially underestimated to borrow, save and grow their money.

Choice of Financial Options

Tala customers use loans to improve household, financial, and personal outcomes, confirming the importance of options of financial tools. The study asked respondents about their loan use and frequency. Across our markets, one in five borrowers surveyed reported taking a digital loan from Tala every month, but trends vary by market. About 70% of customers surveyed in Kenya use their loans for business purposes. Meanwhile, 69% of customers surveyed in Mexico and 74% of customers surveyed in the Philippines reported using their loans for personal use, mainly for paying bills and managing household expenses. In India, 86% reported using their loans for non-business purposes. With new solutions on the horizon, we’ll be able to support customers with services beyond loans to ensure they have the products they need when they need them.

Customer Control of Their Financial Lives

When underserved borrowers are enabled with access to Tala’s digital financial services, they’re able to take control of their financial lives with impactful results. According to the study, three-quarters of borrowers reported an improvement in their overall quality of life because of Tala, with one in five saying it has significantly improved. Notably, eight out of 10 of Tala’s customers in emerging markets reported feeling confident in covering a financial emergency. 

Improvements were noted across the board. Of the Tala borrowers who participated in the study, 77% reported improved financial management and 63% reported decreased financial stress. Women borrowers, in particular, acknowledged meaningful impacts due to Tala — 80% reported increased self-confidence because of Tala’s loans, and 58% reported an increase in their influence on decision-making; of those, 67% talked about having more financial independence. 

Financial Services Built on Trust

To establish trust, we design our products specifically for the underserved customer base with a unique product that is easy to use, and customers are satisfied. Nearly all borrowers trust Tala with their personal information, which is essential for Tala to provide our customers with these financial services. Tala has an average Net Promoter Score® of 68 across all markets, and overall, 64% reported finding it ‘very easy’ to receive a digital loan from Tala. We’re aiming to increase this metric and make it even easier for new customers to use Tala tools and services. Stay tuned for upcoming announcements.

Despite progress to bring in the unbanked, many digital financial services are not reaching the people who can most benefit from these disruptive technologies. At Tala, we’re expanding access to foundational services to the underserved and providing these services in a way that has proven effective and responsible for this customer base. We’ll continue to track these metrics to ensure our products and services meet the needs of our customers.

Methodology 

Commissioned by Tala, impact measurement company 60 Decibels conducted 1008 phone interviews with Tala’s digital loan borrowers in Kenya, Mexico, the Philippines and India in October 2022. The borrowers were randomly selected from a random sample of Tala’s borrower database. 60 Decibels is a global, tech-enabled impact measurement company that brings speed and repeatability to social impact measurement and customer insights.

The post Serving Underserved Customers: 4 Themes from Tala’s Impact Study appeared first on Tala.

At the 2023 World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting, Tala’s CEO & founder, Shivani Siroya, joined global leaders to discuss this. Together with United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development Her Majesty Queen Máxima of the Netherlands, The Wall Street Journal Editor-in-Chief Matthew Murray, State Bank of India Chairman Dinesh Kumar Khara, and Visa CEO & Chairman Alfred Kelly Jr, they examined how technology innovations and cross-sector collaboration can help deliver quality financial services to underserved individuals and businesses. 

Here are some of Shivani’s insights for increasing inclusion for the financially underestimated: 

Take the first risk

“We really believe that trust is a feedback loop. By lending to our customers, we are taking that first risk and truly putting the power in their hands. And, if they find value in that, they will repay us, and they will trust us again. We think of that not just as our customer value, but actually as our company value.”

By solving for our customers’ most pressing concern, which tends to be access to credit, we’re able to build trust with our customers. From there, we continue to build on that trust by providing more services for them. To learn more about how Tala takes the first risk for our customers, check out Shivani’s conversation on Inc’s What I Know Podcast.

Be grounded in the local context 

“Financial agency for the underserved is very much about customization. We cannot create a blanket product — we can create global infrastructure, but it does truly need to be grounded in the market context.”

We’ve always believed that we needed to be close to our customers to best serve them, so Tala is built with deep-local knowledge with global support. More than half of our employees are from the countries we operate in, bringing localized insights and proximity to the customers we support. Then, as a global company, we’re able to bring in insights from other markets and still be responsive to each market’s unique dynamics. 

Go beyond access into agency

“Financial agency, yes, is about access, but ultimately is about having choice and control over your full financial life.”

The majority of Tala’s customers are utilizing a digital loan for the first time. We’re able to give these customers access to financial services that are unattainable elsewhere. While access is the entry to financial inclusion, we can’t stop there. To truly build financial agency, customers need choice and control. Tala creates choice by offering an ecosystem of financial services that meet their unique needs, and we enable customer control by providing experiences that build confidence, provide mental relief, and empower people to take charge of their financial lives.

We’re grateful to the World Economic Forum for providing Tala a platform alongside other changemakers who have the power to move beyond just expanding access to financial services and actually enabling financial agency. Check out the WEF 2023 Financial Inclusion Beyond Access panel to learn more. 

The post WEF 2023: Financial Inclusion Beyond Access appeared first on Tala.

More than 6 million people have used our app to pursue their financial goals with confidence, all from their phone. Previously overlooked, our customers continue to drive the success and evolution of our product. 

Together, they’ve borrowed more than $2.7 billion across Kenya, the Philippines, Mexico, and India to start and expand small businesses and manage day-to-day needs. They’ve used over 680,000 access points and mobile agents to cash out and repay how they prefer and have spent more than 108 thousand hours reading over 156 educational articles in our app. They have also given Tala more than 1 million 5-star reviews, making us one of the top finance apps in markets we serve. More than 12,000 people sign up for Tala everyday. And we know they need more services. 

Today, we’re proud to announce a $145 million Series E fundraise led by Upstart with participation from the Stellar Development Foundation. New investors Kindred Ventures and the J. Safra Group also joined, along with existing investors IVP, Revolution Growth, PayPal Ventures, and Lowercase Capital, to bring our total funding to more than $350 million. 

We’ll use this investment to provide those services and accelerate the rollout of our new financial account experience, which provides fresh new tools to grow, save, and manage your money. We’ll also work to develop one of the first mass-market crypto products for emerging markets to help make crypto solutions more affordable and equitable for those who need them most. 

Thanks to everyone who has chosen Tala as their financial partner and to all those who have helped us grow. After seven years, this still feels like the beginning.

If you’re interested in helping us accelerate financial agency for all, we’d love to hear from you. Check out our open positions at tala.co/careers.

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