Africa’s largest fintech company, Flutterwave, has acquired Nigerian open banking startup Mono in an all-stock transaction valued between $25 million and $40 million, according to people familiar with the deal. The acquisition brings together two of Africa’s most prominent fintech infrastructure companies at a time when consolidation is increasing across the sector.
Flutterwave operates one of the continent’s widest payment networks, supporting local and cross-border transactions across more than 30 African countries. Mono, often described as the “Plaid for Africa,” provides application programming interfaces that allow businesses to access bank data, initiate payments, and verify customers with their consent.
Mono has raised about $17.5 million from investors including Tiger Global, General Catalyst, and Target Global. Sources close to the transaction said the acquisition allowed investors to at least recoup their capital, with some early backers seeing paper returns of up to 20x based on the implied valuation of the Flutterwave stock they received. The companies said Mono will continue to operate as an independent product following the deal.
Founded in 2020, Mono uses APIs that enable users to consent to sharing their bank information. This allows financial institutions and fintech companies to analyze income patterns, spending behavior, and repayment capacity. The company was built to address the lack of standardized access to bank data across many African markets, where credit bureaus remain limited and lenders often rely on customers’ transaction histories to assess creditworthiness.
According to Mono chief executive Abdulhamid Hassan, nearly all Nigerian digital lenders now depend on Mono’s infrastructure. The company claims it has powered more than 8 million bank account linkages, covering roughly 12 percent of Nigeria’s banked population. It also says it has delivered about 100 billion financial data points to lending companies and processed millions of dollars in direct bank payments. Its customers include Visa-backed Moniepoint and GIC-backed PalmPay.
For Flutterwave, the acquisition deepens its vertical integration beyond payments. By adding Mono’s data capabilities, Flutterwave can now offer onboarding and identity checks, bank account verification, data-driven risk assessment, and one-time or recurring bank payments within a single product stack for businesses operating across African markets.
Flutterwave chief executive Olugbenga ‘GB’ Agboola described the acquisition as a strategic move tied to the next phase of fintech growth on the continent. “Payments, data, and trust cannot exist in silos,” Agboola said. “Open banking provides the connective tissue, and Mono has built critical infrastructure in this space.”
Hassan said the deal comes as Africa enters what he described as a credit-driven phase, driven by government-backed financial inclusion initiatives that rely on lending to individuals and small businesses. He argued that this transition depends heavily on robust data infrastructure and regulatory confidence, particularly in markets such as Nigeria where open banking frameworks are still evolving.
“If the economy is going to be credit-driven, you need deep data intelligence to know how people earn and spend,” Hassan said. “But at the same time, for open banking to really work, regulators need to be confident that customer funds are safe.”
Against that backdrop, joining Flutterwave positions Mono to scale more quickly once regulatory barriers ease. Flutterwave already operates across dozens of African markets and has local licenses, enterprise customers, and compliance teams in place, which could help accelerate Mono’s regional expansion.
“This allows us to expand what’s possible for businesses operating across African markets while staying grounded in security, compliance, and local relevance,” Agboola said.
The transaction mirrors earlier attempts at consolidation in global fintech infrastructure, including Visa’s failed acquisition of Plaid in 2020, which was blocked by United States regulators. Hassan pointed to that deal as evidence that combining data infrastructure with payment rails can unlock scale, even though regulatory scrutiny remains a major factor.
Both companies are backed by Y Combinator and share Tiger Global as a common investor. Tiger Global led Flutterwave’s Series C round and Mono’s Series A round. Hassan said the investment firm did not facilitate the transaction, noting that the deal emerged from a longstanding working relationship between the two companies. Flutterwave and Mono had partnered on several bank payment products over the years before the acquisition.
That collaboration unfolded against an open banking landscape that has shifted significantly in the past five years. When Mono launched, it competed with firms such as Base10 Partners-backed Okra and Ribbit Capital-backed Stitch. Since then, Mono has emerged as a leading player in the space, following Okra’s shutdown and Stitch’s pivot toward a deeper payments-focused strategy that enabled it to raise more capital.
Addressing Mono’s financial position ahead of the acquisition, Hassan said the company was not forced into a sale. According to Pitchbook, Mono raised $15 million in a Series A round at a $50 million post-money valuation in 2021. Hassan said the company is on track toward profitability this year and holds significant cash reserves. He added that raising another funding round would have introduced new valuation pressures and growth expectations in a challenging funding environment.
Beyond the two companies involved, the deal highlights a broader inflection point for African fintech. Startups that once aimed to grow into standalone giants may increasingly find stronger outcomes by integrating into scaled platforms that already have distribution, regulatory coverage, and enterprise relationships across the continent.
