Mambu Selected as Core Banking Provider by Nyla, Africa’s First Islamic Neobank

WHY THIS MATTERS: The strategic collaboration between Mambu and Nyla delivers a powerful validation of the composable banking model in high-growth, multi-jurisdictional markets. This news transcends a typical vendor announcement; it signals the accelerated adoption of embedded finance within highly specialized, underserved verticals. Islamic finance, which accounts for only a fraction of its global market share in Africa, has long struggled with legacy infrastructure. By utilizing Mambu’s cloud-native core, Nyla can bypass the lengthy, capital-intensive process of building banking systems from the ground up, enabling the rapid and compliant deployment of Shari’ah-compliant services across West African regulatory environments. This is a critical value-first lesson for the broader industry: pan-African scalability and speed-to-market for niche financial products are best achieved through a flexible, composable foundation, setting a new operational standard for addressing financial exclusion.

Mambu, the leading SaaS cloud banking platform, today announced a strategic collaboration with Nyla, Africa’s first Islamic neobank, to power its shari’ah-compliant digital banking infrastructure as it launches in Ghana and prepares for expansion across West Africa.

The partnership marks a significant milestone for Mambu’s Islamic banking offering on the African continent, bringing scalable, cloud-native infrastructure to an underserved market.

Islamic finance represents a global market exceeding $7 trillion. However, Africa accounts for just 2% of the industry, despite strong demand for ethical, values-based financial services across Muslim-majority and underserved communities. Nyla is addressing this gap with a digital-first, values-driven model, utilising Mambu’s SaaS, API-first cloud banking platform to launch quickly without building core infrastructure from scratch. At launch, Nyla will offer digital current and savings wallets, peer-to-peer transfers, bill payments, and card-linked accounts.

Mambu’s core banking engine powers Nyla’s ambition to expand into a full-service pan-African digital Islamic bank by enabling account creation, product configuration, balance management and transaction processing across its suite of digital financial services. This composable foundation, running on Amazon Web Services (AWS) will allow Nyla to scale efficiently across multiple African markets— including Nigeria, Senegal, and Gambia, leveraging Mambu’s multi-country scalability to enter new regulatory environments.

Mambu’s Islamic banking offering provides a modern, cloud-native foundation for financial institutions to deliver Shari’ah-compliant services alongside or independent of conventional banking. Mambu’s comprehensive Islamic funding suite supports a diverse range of deposit and investment products, including transactional accounts, fixed deposits, and savings plans utilising key contracts. 

“The global Islamic finance market represents a significant and underserved opportunity, particularly across Africa. Nyla is addressing that gap with a digital-first, values-driven model, and we are proud to power their core infrastructure,” Mark Geneste, Chief Revenue Officer at Mambu said. “Our platform is purpose-built to support Islamic and non-interest banking products, enabling institutions to innovate while maintaining compliance and operational resilience. This collaborative partnership reflects the growing demand for modern, scalable Islamic digital banking solutions.”

Nyla has already demonstrated strong market demand with over 33,000 users on its waitlist. Following the completion of an oversubscribed pre-seed funding round and its expected June 2026 launch, the neobank targets:

• 10,000 customer sign-ups within the first month

• USD $500,000 in total transaction value processed across all products

• 400,000 total users by end of 2026

“Our long-term ambition is to build the largest Islamic bank in the world. We are starting with digital products, but our vision extends to building the infrastructure layer for Islamic finance across Africa and beyond. By combining ethical banking principles with scalable technology, we aim to confront financial exclusion with a lasting and practical solution. Collaborating with Mambu gives us the foundation to execute that vision with speed and compliance,” said Nyla Chief Executive Officer, Mubarak Sumaila.

Over the next 24 to 36 months, Nyla plans to deepen its product suite to include physical debit cards, remittances, BNPL and Shari’ah-compliant investment instruments such as Sukuk, as well as a dedicated “Nyla for Business” offering. 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

FF NEWS TAKE: This partnership moves the needle by establishing a blueprint for how flexible, modern core infrastructure can unlock significant financial inclusion opportunities in untapped, compliance-heavy markets. The successful rollout will validate the economic model for vertically-focused neobanks in the global south. The key factor to watch is Nyla’s ability to execute its ambitious pan-African expansion and diversify its offerings, particularly the forthcoming Shari’ah-compliant investment instruments such as Sukuk. Success here will confirm the maturity of composable banking solutions across continents, attracting a new wave of capital and competition.

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