Flutterwave, the largest African fintech company by scale of operations, has acquired Nigerian startup Mono, which specializes in open banking, in a fully equity-based deal valued at $25 to $40 million, according to people familiar with the transaction.
The merger unites two leading fintech infrastructure companies on the continent: Flutterwave has one of the widest payment networks in the region, while Mono – often dubbed “Plaid for Africa” for its API that allows businesses to access bank data, initiate payments, and perform customer due diligence.
Mono attracted about $17.5 million from investors, including Tiger Global, General Catalyst, and Target Global. People close to the deal say that the acquisition will allow all investors to recoup their capital, and some earlier participants to see returns of up to 20x. Mono will remain an independent product within this agreement.
The company was founded in 2020 and, like Plaid, uses APIs to obtain user consent to share bank data, enabling financial institutions to analyze customers’ income, expenditures, and creditworthiness.
Mono addresses the problem of the lack of standardized access to bank data in African markets, where credit bureaus are often limited, and fintechs – including lenders – rely on transaction history to assess creditworthiness.
According to CEO Abdulhamid Hassan, almost all Nigerian digital lenders currently rely on Mono. The company claims to have facilitated over 8 million bank account connections, covering about 12% of Nigeria’s banking population. Mono also states that it has provided 100 billion financial points to lending companies and processed millions of direct bank payments. Clients include Moniepoint, supported by Visa, and PalmPay, supported by GIC.
For Flutterwave, which serves local and cross-border payments in more than 30 African countries, the deal deepens vertical integration. The company will now be able to offer onboarding and identity verification, bank account verification, data-driven risk assessment, and one-off or recurring bank payments in a single technology stack.
“Payments, data and trust cannot exist in isolation. Open banking provides the connective tissue, and Mono has built the critical infrastructure in this space.”
“If the economy is going to be credit-driven, we need deep data analytics to know how people earn and spend money. But at the same time, for open banking to truly work, regulators must be confident that customers’ funds are safe.”
“This collaboration has unfolded against the backdrop of an open landscape of open banking, which has undergone significant changes over the last five years.”
In the context of the deal, Hassan emphasized that this step reflects steady consolidation processes in the global fintech infrastructure: previously Visa tried to acquire Plaid in 2020, but U.S. regulators blocked the deal. Both founders – participants in the Y Combinator program – speak of Tiger Global as one of the investors, but Hassan noted that the investment firm was not the driving force behind the deal; it merely became part of the strong working relationships between companies that have collaborated on banking products for many years.
The key takeaway is that open banking and payments infrastructure accelerate the integration of African fintechs with scalable platforms. Mono gains access to more dynamic growth, while Flutterwave expands its range of services and geography, leveraging the existing regulatory and operational context of the regions where they operate.
Among Mono’s competitors are players like Okra and Stitch, which have undergone transformations due to changes in the open banking market, while Mono has managed to secure a leadership position thanks to this transformation. Growing demand for data and payments solutions in Africa supports the trend toward integration into scalable platforms rather than pursuing standalone giants.
According to sources, Mono’s financial situation before the deal looked stable: in 2021 the company raised $15 million in a Series A round with a post-money valuation of around $50 million; the sale was not forced. With available reserves, further rounds of fundraising could have created new expectations regarding valuation and growth. However, this deal reflects broader trends in Africa’s fintech industry: many startups, previously oriented toward autonomy, are increasingly integrating into scalable platforms to achieve greater scale and stability.
