Ziggy Ojiegbe

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Flutterwave, Africa’s largest fintech company, 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 the continent’s most important fintech infrastructure players. Flutterwave operates one of Africa’s widest payments networks, while Mono—often described as the “Plaid for Africa”—has built APIs that enable businesses to access bank data, verify customers, and initiate payments.

Mono has raised about $17.5 million from investors including Tiger Global, General Catalyst, and Target Global. Sources said the deal allowed all investors to at least recover their capital, with some early backers recording returns of up to 20x. Mono will continue to operate as an independent product, the companies said.

Founded in 2020, Mono enables users to consent to sharing bank data, allowing financial institutions and fintechs to analyse income, spending patterns, and repayment capacity. The company emerged to address the lack of standardised access to bank data across African markets, where limited credit bureau coverage has forced lenders to rely heavily on transaction histories to assess creditworthiness.

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Mono chief executive Abdulhamid Hassan said nearly all Nigerian digital lenders now rely on the company’s infrastructure. Mono claims to have powered more than 8 million bank account linkages—roughly 12% of Nigeria’s banked population—delivered over 100 billion financial data points to lenders, and processed millions of dollars in direct bank payments. Its customers include Visa-backed Moniepoint and GIC-backed PalmPay.

For Flutterwave, which supports local and cross-border payments across more than 30 African countries, the acquisition deepens its vertical integration. Beyond payments, the company can now offer onboarding, 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 described the deal as a strategic bet on Africa’s next phase of fintech growth. “Payments, data, and trust cannot exist in silos,” he said. “Open banking provides the connective tissue, and Mono has built critical infrastructure in this space.”

Hassan said the continent is moving toward a more credit-driven financial system, driven by government-backed financial inclusion efforts. That shift, he argued, depends on robust data infrastructure and regulatory confidence—particularly in Nigeria, where open banking frameworks are still evolving.

“If the economy is going to be credit-driven, you need deep data intelligence to understand how people earn and spend,” Hassan said. “At the same time, regulators need to be confident that customer funds and data are safe.”

Joining Flutterwave positions Mono to scale rapidly as regulatory barriers fall. Flutterwave already operates across dozens of African markets, with local licences, enterprise customers, and compliance teams in place.

The transaction echoes earlier global fintech consolidation attempts, including Visa’s failed acquisition of Plaid in 2020, which was blocked by US regulators. Hassan cited that deal as evidence of the scale unlocked by combining data infrastructure with payment rails.

Both companies are backed by Tiger Global, which led Flutterwave’s Series C and Mono’s Series A, although Hassan said the firm did not facilitate the transaction. Instead, the deal grew out of a long-standing commercial relationship, with the two companies having collaborated on bank payment products for several years.

Mono entered an open banking landscape that has shifted significantly since its launch. Early competitors included Okra and Stitch. Okra has since shut down, while Stitch has pivoted toward a broader payments strategy, raising substantially more capital. Mono has emerged as one of the category’s leading players.

Hassan said Mono was not forced into a sale and is on track to reach profitability this year. With significant cash reserves, raising another funding round would have introduced new valuation pressures in a challenging investment environment.

Beyond the two companies, the deal signals a broader inflection point for African fintech. As funding tightens and scale becomes harder to achieve independently, more startups may find stronger outcomes through consolidation into established platforms rather than pursuing standalone growth.