Africa’s largest fintech company, Flutterwave, has acquired the Nigerian open banking startup Mono in an all-stock deal valued between 25 million and 40 million dollars, according to people familiar with the transaction. This acquisition brings together two of Africa’s leading fintech infrastructure companies. Flutterwave operates one of the continent’s widest payments networks, while Mono, often described as the “Plaid for Africa,” has built APIs that allow businesses to access bank data, initiate payments, and verify customers.
Mono has raised about 17.5 million dollars from investors including Tiger Global, General Catalyst, and Target Global. Sources close to the deal said the acquisition allowed all its investors to at least recoup their capital, with some early backers realizing returns of up to twenty times their investment. The companies stated that Mono will continue to operate as an independent product.
Founded in 2020, Mono uses APIs that allow users to consent to sharing their bank information, enabling financial institutions to analyze income, spending patterns, and repayment capacity. The company addresses the lack of standardized access to bank data across African markets, where credit bureaus remain limited and fintechs, especially lenders, often rely on customers’ bank transaction histories to assess creditworthiness.
According to Mono’s CEO Abdulhamid Hassan, nearly all Nigerian digital lenders now rely on Mono’s infrastructure. The company claims to have powered more than 8 million bank account linkages, covering roughly 12 percent of Nigeria’s banked population. It also claims to have delivered 100 billion financial data points to lending companies and processed millions in direct bank payments. Its customers include Visa-backed Moniepoint and GIC-backed PalmPay.
For Flutterwave, which powers local and cross-border payments across more than 30 African countries, the deal deepens its vertical integration. In addition to payments, the company can now offer onboarding and identity checks, bank account verification, data-driven risk assessment, and one-time or recurring bank payments within a single platform.
Flutterwave CEO Olugbenga ‘GB’ Agboola framed the acquisition as a bet on Africa’s next phase of fintech growth. He stated that payments, data, and trust cannot exist in silos, and that open banking provides the connective tissue, with Mono having built critical infrastructure in this space.
Hassan echoed that view, arguing that Africa is entering a credit-driven phase as governments across the continent push lending-led financial inclusion initiatives. That transition depends on both substantial data infrastructure and regulatory confidence, particularly in markets like Nigeria, where open banking frameworks are still evolving. He noted that for an economy to be credit-driven, deep data intelligence is needed to understand how people earn and spend, but regulators also need confidence that customer funds are safe for open banking to work.
Against that backdrop, joining Flutterwave positions Mono to scale quickly once regulatory barriers fall. Flutterwave already operates across dozens of African markets, with local licenses, enterprise customers, and compliance teams in place. Agboola stated this allows them to expand what’s possible for businesses operating across African markets while staying grounded in security, compliance, and local relevance.
The transaction mirrors earlier consolidation attempts in global fintech infrastructure, including Visa’s failed acquisition of Plaid in 2020, which was blocked by U.S. regulators. Hassan cited that deal as evidence that combining data infrastructure with payment rails can unlock scale. Both Y Combinator-backed companies count Tiger Global among their backers. Hassan clarified, however, that the firm did not facilitate this transaction. Instead, the deal grew from a longstanding working relationship between the two companies, which had partnered on several bank payment products over the years.
That collaboration played out against an open banking landscape that has changed significantly. When Mono launched, it faced competition from companies such as Okra and Stitch. Since then, Mono has emerged as a leading player following Okra’s shutdown and Stitch’s pivot toward a deeper payments ecosystem play.
Addressing Mono’s financial position ahead of the acquisition, Hassan said the company was not forced into a sale and is on track toward profitability this year. With significant cash reserves, he added that raising another round would have introduced new valuation and growth expectations in a tough funding environment.
Beyond the two companies involved, this transaction signals a broader inflection point for African fintech, where startups that once aspired to become standalone giants may increasingly find better outcomes by integrating into scaled platforms.