Africa’s fintech ecosystem marked a major milestone on January 5, 2026, when Flutterwave – the continent’s largest fintech firm – acquired Nigerian open banking startup, Mono, in a strategic all-stock deal valued between $25 million and $40 million.
The transaction represents one of the few significant fintech exits in Africa, combining payments scale with deep financial-data infrastructure to unlock the next phase of digital finance on the continent.
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Deal Overview & Investor Outcomes
- 💰 Deal value: $25M–$40M all-stock transaction.
- 📈 Funding raised by Mono: ~$17.5 million since founding in 2020.
- 🐅 Investor returns: Early backers reportedly saw up to ~20× returns, a rare outcome given the tough African funding environment.
- 🧠 Acquisition type: All-stock (no cash paid).
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Mono will continue to operate as an independent product within Flutterwave’s broader ecosystem, preserving leadership and innovation continuity.
What Mono Brings to Flutterwave
Mono, often called the “Plaid for Africa,” built an advanced open-banking API platform that provides:
✅ Bank account linkages: ~8 million accounts linked — roughly 12% of Nigeria’s banked population.
✅ Financial data delivery: Over 100 billion financial data points transmitted to lenders and fintechs.
✅ Direct bank payments: Processed millions in bank-to-bank transactions.
✅ Key customers: VISA-backed Moniepoint and GIC-backed PalmPay.
Mono’s APIs allow businesses to access user-consented bank data, execute account verification, and enable income/spending assessment – critical for credit decisions in markets where credit bureau coverage is limited.
We’re thrilled to announce that Mono has been acquired by @theflutterwave!
Mono will be joining The ‘Wave in a strategic combination that brings together our pioneering Open Banking expertise with Flutterwave’s unmatched scale and network across Africa.
What this means for our… pic.twitter.com/TNFZ1SkWqc
— Mono (@mono_hq) January 5, 2026
Strategic Benefits of the Acquisition
1.) End-to-End Financial Infrastructure
The combination empowers Flutterwave to offer:
- Onboarding and KYC
- Identity and bank account verification
- Data-driven risk scoring
- One-time and recurring bank payments
- Direct bank transfer capabilities
All of these functions now sit within a single integrated platform – a substantial upgrade from a standalone payments gateway.
2.) Expansion of Use Cases
By embedding open banking and financial data:
- Lenders can underwrite credit more confidently.
- SMBs get faster onboarding and conversion.
- Cross-border and local payments become more reliable and secure.
This marks a shift from payments-only infrastructure to a broader trust and data-enabled stack for financial product innovation.
FINTECH AFRICA | Nigerian Fintech, Mono, Partners with MasterCard to Enable Account-to-Account Payments
Industry Context: A Shift Toward Open Banking & Data
Open banking – still nascent in many African markets – is increasingly seen as foundational to future financial services. Data access is widely viewed as the key to unlocking:
- Credit inclusion at scale
- Automated financial identity verification
- Seamless lending workflows
- Embedded finance experiences
With nearly all Nigerian digital lenders relying on Mono’s infrastructure, the acquisition cements Flutterwave’s role deeper in the financial data value chain and not just payment rails.
Central Bank of Nigeria Unveils Operational Guidelines for Open Banking
Mono Tokenization Initiative
While most coverage focuses on open banking, Mono is also building products that leverage tokenization, particularly in identity and onboarding:
See also
🔹 Mono Prove: A solution combining government ID verification, liveness detection, and digital tokenization to create reusable, secure identity credentials – effectively a tokenized identity network that strengthens customer verification across digital services.
Tokenization here refers to transforming sensitive identity attributes into secure digital tokens that can be reused to verify users without exposing raw personal data – a trend increasingly adopted in global identity tech. While not yet a blockchain token in the crypto sense, these tokenized records create friction-less, secure experiences and lay groundwork for future trusted identity layers in fintech ecosystems.
This innovation – coupled with Flutterwave’s payments and data stack – could become foundational for tokenized financial services, including credential sharing, consent management, and even blockchain-native products as regulatory frameworks evolve.
OPINION | Africa’s Capital Market Opportunity: Is Tokenization the Secret Key to Unlock Africa’s Economic Potential? – By CEO, Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE)
By combining payments, identity, data and potential tokenization capabilities, Flutterwave and Mono could shape the next wave of African financial products — from credit underwriting and compliance automation to future blockchain-enabled features.
FINTECH AFRICA | ‘Stablecoin Adoption Has the Potential to 10x the Volumes We’re Currently Doing,’ Says CEO, Flutterwave
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