…adds Open Banking to your payments stack
Flutterwave, Africa's largest fintech company, has acquired Nigerian open banking startup Mono in an all-stock transaction worth between $25 million and $40 million, according to people familiar with the deal, which significantly expands Flutterwave's fintech infrastructure beyond payments.
This acquisition brings together two of Africa's most prominent fintech infrastructure players. Flutterwave operates one of the continent's most extensive payments networks, enabling local and cross-border transactions in more than 30 African countries. Mono, often described as plaid for Africa, provides APIs that allow businesses to access bank data, verify customers, initiate payments, and assess financial behavior with user consent.
Under the terms of the deal, Mono will continue to operate as an independent product, the companies said, while being integrated into Flutterwave's broader platform. The acquisition allows Flutterwave to offer payments, onboarding, identity verification, bank account verification, and data-driven risk assessment within a single technology stack.
Flutterwave CEO Olugbenga 'GB' Egbula said, “This acquisition is about building the connective tissue for the next phase of Africa's fintech growth. Payments, data and trust cannot exist in silos. Open banking provides the foundation, and Monero has built critical infrastructure in this area.”
Founded in 2020, Mono enables consumers to consent to share their bank information with financial institutions, allowing lenders and fintechs to analyze income, spending patterns and repayment capacity. The product has become the core infrastructure for Nigeria's digital lending ecosystem, where limited credit bureau coverage means lenders often rely on bank transaction history to assess creditworthiness.
Mono CEO Abdulhamid Hassan said almost all Nigerian digital lenders now rely on the company’s infrastructure. Mono claims to have operated over 8 million bank account linkages, covered approximately 12 percent of Nigeria's banked population, delivered over 100 billion financial data points to lenders, and processed millions of dollars in direct bank payments. Its clients include Visa-backed MoneyPoint and GIC-backed PalmPay.
The startup 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 all investors to get at least their capital back, with some early backers realizing returns of up to 20x, a rare outcome in the tough funding environment for African startups.
For Flutterwave, the deal represents a deeper push into vertical integration at a time when fintechs are under pressure to demonstrate strong unit economics and broader product relevance. In addition to card and bank payments, Flutterwave can now embed open banking capabilities like income verification, account ownership checks, and recurring bank payments directly into its platform.
Hassan framed the deal as a strategic response to Africa's changing financial landscape. “Africa is entering a credit-driven phase, as governments are pushing for credit-based financial inclusion. If the economy is going to be credit-driven, you need deep data intelligence to understand how people earn and spend. At the same time, regulators need to be assured that customer funds and data are secure,” he said.
Across Africa, particularly in Nigeria, open banking frameworks are still developing, with regulatory clarity delaying product adoption. Against that backdrop, Hassan said joining Flutterwave will position Mono to scale more quickly once regulatory hurdles are reduced. Flutterwave is already working with local licenses, enterprise customers and compliance teams in dozens of African markets.
“This allows us to scale for businesses operating in African markets while remaining grounded in security, compliance and local relevance,” Egbula said.
The transaction mirrors earlier consolidation efforts in the global fintech infrastructure, including Visa's attempted acquisition of plaid in 2020, which was ultimately blocked by US regulators, Tech Crunch reports.
Hassan cited that deal as evidence that combining data infrastructure with payments rails can unlock significant scale, even if regulatory scrutiny remains high.
Flutterwave and Mono are both backed by Y Combinator and share Tiger Global as a common investor. However, Hasan said Tiger Global did not facilitate the transaction. Instead, the deal grew out of a long-standing commercial relationship between the two companies, which had partnered on a number of bank payments products over the years.
This collaboration unfolds against a rapidly changing open banking landscape. When Mono launched, it faced competition from companies like Okra and Stitch. Since then, Okra has spun off, while Stitch has moved toward a deeper payments-focused model that has enabled it to raise significantly more capital. During that period Mono has emerged as a leading standalone open banking provider in Nigeria.
Addressing speculation about Mono's financial condition, Hasan said that the company was not forced into a sale. According to PitchBook, Mono raised a $15 million Series A in 2021 at a $50 million post-money valuation and is on track to reach profitability this year. With strong cash reserves, he said raising another funding round would bring new valuation and growth pressures amid a tough global funding environment.
Apart from the two companies involved, the acquisition signals a broader turn for African fintech. As funding becomes tighter and regulatory demands increase, startups that once aspired to become standalone giants may increasingly find better results by integrating into larger platforms.
For Flutterwave, the Mono deal underlines a strategic bet that the future of African fintech is not just in moving money, but in owning the data and trust layers that make credit, commerce and financial inclusion possible at scale.
