Flutterwave Acquires Nigerian Mono in Strategic Push for Open Banking

Africa’s unicorn startup, Flutterwave, has acquired Nigerian open banking startup Mono in an all-stock deal valued between $25 million and $40 million.

The acquisition unites two of Africa’s top fintech infrastructure companies. Flutterwave operates one of the continent’s largest payments networks. Mono, often dubbed the “Plaid for Africa,” has developed APIs enabling businesses to access bank data, initiate payments, and verify customers.

Meet Mono, The “Plaid for Africa”

Founded in 2020 by Prakhar Singh and Abdulhamid Hassan, Mono has been building the infrastructure that makes open banking possible in Africa. Known within the industry as the “Plaid for Africa”, it offers APIs that enable businesses to securely access users’ bank data, verify identities, and initiate bank transfers with consent. 

Related Post: African Fintech Company, Flutterwave Appoints Ex-Citi Executive as CFO

In markets where credit bureaus are underdeveloped, access to financial data becomes even more valuable. It enables lenders to assess creditworthiness more accurately and supports a broader range of financial products that rely on verified account information.

According to CEO Abdulhamid Hassan, almost all Nigerian digital lenders now rely on Mono’s infrastructure. The startup claims to have powered more than 8 million bank account linkages, covering roughly 12% of Nigeria’s banked population. 

It also asserts that it has delivered 100 billion financial data points to lending companies and processed millions in direct bank payments. Some of its customers include Visa-backed Moniepoint and GIC-backed PalmPay.

Mono has raised approximately $17.5 million from investors, including Tiger Global, General Catalyst, and Target Global. Sources familiar with the deal said the acquisition allowed all its investors to at least break even, with some early backers realizing returns of up to 20x. Mono will continue to operate independently as a product, the companies said in a statement.

How Mono’s Acquisition Will Deepen Flutterwave’s Vertical Integration

For years, Flutterwave has dominated payment processing across Africa, enabling local businesses to accept and send money through one API. That foundation made the fintech startup the backbone of commerce and remittances across more than 30 countries. But in a market where data access and trust are becoming critical, integrating open banking infrastructure gives it a new edge.

This deal will deepen Flutterwave’s vertical integration, which powers local and cross-border payments across more than 30 African countries. Furthermore, the company can now offer a range of services within a single stack. These services include onboarding, identity checks, bank account verification, data-driven risk assessment, and one-time or recurring bank payments.

Related Post: African Unicorn Moniepoint Raises Additional $90M for Expansion Plans

Commenting on the acquisition, Olugbenga ‘GB’ Agboola, Founder and CEO of Flutterwave, said, “This acquisition reflects how we think about the future of financial infrastructure in Africa. Payments, data, and trust cannot exist in silos. Open banking provides the connective tissue, and Mono has built critical infrastructure in this space. This acquisition allows us to expand what’s possible for businesses operating across African markets, while staying grounded in security, compliance, and local relevance.”

Flutterwave Founder, Olugbenga Agboola

Hassan also added, saying,  “We built Mono to unlock Africa’s Open Banking potential, and since our first partnership with Flutterwave in 2021 and working together over the years, we’ve seen the power of a coordinated effort towards this goal. Mono’s capabilities across financial data access, direct bank payments, and identity verification, combined with Flutterwave’s unmatched scale and global reach, create something more defensible and comprehensive. This acquisition allows us to build the infrastructure layer that powers the next generation of African fintech at the speed and scale the continent deserves.”

The integration enhances Flutterwave’s vertical depth, reinforcing long-term value creation through more substantial margins, deeper platform stickiness, and differentiated infrastructure. Regulatory stakeholders benefit from increased standardization, stronger data protection, and adherence to global security frameworks, including PCI-DSS and ISO 27001.

What This Deal Means for Global Fintech Infrastructure

The deal echoes earlier consolidation efforts in global fintech infrastructure, including Visa’s failed 2020 acquisition of Plaid, which U.S. regulators blocked. Hassan cited that deal as evidence that combining data infrastructure with payment rails can unlock scale. 

Both Y Combinator-backed companies list Tiger Global (which led Flutterwave’s Series C and Mono’s Series A) among their investors. Hassan, however, said that the firm didn’t facilitate the transaction. Instead, the deal stemmed from a longstanding partnership between the two companies, which had collaborated on several bank payment products. 

That collaboration unfolded against a backdrop of significant changes in the open banking landscape 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, Mono has emerged as a leading player, following Okra’s shutdown and Stitch’s pivot toward a deeper payments ecosystem play that has enabled it to raise more capital. 

Addressing Mono’s financial position ahead of the acquisition, Hassan said the company wasn’t forced into a sale to Flutterwave; rather, it is now on track to become profitable this year. With substantial cash reserves, he added, raising another round would’ve introduced new valuation and growth expectations in a challenging funding environment.

The acquisition reflects growing recognition that Africa’s payments growth will be driven less by card rails and more by bank-based, authenticated, and locally relevant payment methods. By integrating Mono’s open banking APIs, Flutterwave strengthens its ability to support faster onboarding, improved verification, reduced fraud, and seamless account-to-account payments.

The collaboration creates an open-banking-enabled expansion into alternative payment methods, authenticated payment flows, and, over time, open-banking-enabled stablecoin use cases. It also has implications beyond product expansion.

Related Post: South African Tyme Group Becomes Africa’s Latest Unicorn After $250M Series D Funding

Businesses gain access to infrastructure that simplifies compliance-heavy processes, such as identity checks and bank verification, improving conversion and reliability at scale. Developers and partners benefit from a unified environment where payments and financial data coexist, reducing complexity and accelerating time to market.

Main Image: Abdulhamid Hassan and Prakhar Singh, Mono founders. Image Credit: Mono