Flutterwave, Africa’s largest fintech company, has acquired Nigerian open banking startup Mono in an all-stock deal worth between $25 million and $40 million, according to people familiar with the deal.
This acquisition brings together two of Africa’s leading fintech infrastructure companies. Flutterwave operates one of the most extensive payments networks on the continent, and Mono, also known as “Africa’s Plaid,” has built an API that allows businesses to access banking data, initiate payments, and verify customers.
Mono has raised approximately $17.5 million from investors including Tiger Global, General Catalyst, and Target Global. The deal would at least give investors a return on their capital, with some early backers looking at paper returns of up to 20 times based on the implied valuation of the shares they received from Flutterwave, according to people close to the deal. Mono will continue to operate as an independent product, the companies said in a statement.
The deal would at least give investors a return on their capital, with some early backers seeing a paper return of up to 20 times based on the implied valuation of the shares they received, according to people close to the deal.
Founded in 2020, Mono, like Plaid, uses an API that allows users to consent to sharing their banking information, allowing financial institutions to analyze their income, spending patterns, and ability to repay.
The company is addressing the lack of standardized access to banking data across African markets. Credit bureaus remain limited in African markets, and fintechs, especially financial providers, often rely on customers’ banking history to assess creditworthiness.
According to CEO Abdulhamid Hassan, almost all digital lenders in Nigeria now rely on Mono’s infrastructure. The company claims to have linked more than 8 million bank accounts, covering approximately 12% of Nigeria’s banked population. It also claims to have provided 100 billion financial data points to financial companies and processed millions of direct bank payments. Customers include Moniepoint, backed by Visa, and PalmPay, backed by GIC.
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The deal marks a deepening of vertical integration for Flutterwave, which facilitates domestic and cross-border payments in more than 30 African countries. In addition to payments, the company can now offer onboarding and identity verification, bank account verification, data-driven risk assessment, and one-time or recurring bank payments within a single stack.
Flutterwave CEO Olugbenga “GB” Agboola framed the acquisition as a bet on the next phase of African fintech growth. “Payments, data and trust cannot exist in silos,” he said. “Open Banking provides the connective tissue and Mono has built significant infrastructure in this space.”
Mr. Hassan echoed that view, arguing that Africa is entering a credit-driven phase as governments across the continent pursue loan-driven financial inclusion initiatives. That transition will depend on both rich data infrastructure and regulatory trust, especially in markets like Nigeria where open banking frameworks are still evolving.
“If the economy is going to be credit-driven, we need deep data intelligence to understand how people earn and spend,” Hassan said. “But at the same time, for open banking to really work, regulators need to be confident that customers’ funds are safe.”
Against this backdrop, by joining Flutterwave, Mono is in a position to scale quickly once the regulatory walls come down. Flutterwave already operates in dozens of African markets, with local licensing, enterprise customers, and compliance teams in place.
“This will expand the possibilities for companies to operate across African markets while maintaining security, compliance and regional relevance,” Agboola said.
The deal mirrors previous consolidation attempts in global fintech infrastructure, including Visa’s failed acquisition of Plaid in 2020, which was blocked by U.S. regulators. Hassan cited the deal as evidence that combining data infrastructure and payment rails can unlock scale.
Both Y Combinator-backed companies count Tiger Global (lead investor in Flutterwave’s Series C and Mono’s Series A) among their backers. But Hassan said the company did not facilitate the deal. Rather, the agreement stems from a long-standing collaboration between the two companies, which have partnered on several banking payment products over the years.
This collaboration unfolds against the backdrop of an open banking landscape that has changed significantly over the past five years.
When Mono launched, it faced competition from companies like Base10 Partners-backed Okra and Ribbit Capital-backed Stitch. Since then, following Okra’s closure and Stitch’s steering into a deeper payments ecosystem, Mono has emerged as a major player in the space and is able to raise significantly more capital.
Hassan addressed Mono’s financials ahead of the acquisition, saying the company, which raised $15 million in Series A at a $50 million post-money valuation in 2021, was not forced to sell to Flutterwave and is on track to return to profitability this year, according to Pitchbook. He added that with large cash reserves, raising another round would have provided fresh valuation and growth expectations in a difficult funding environment.
Still, beyond the two companies involved, the deal, similar to the combination of South African fintech companies Resaca and Adumo, signals a broader tipping point for African fintechs, where startups that once aimed to become standalone giants may increasingly find better outcomes by integrating into larger platforms.
