Flutterwave buys Nigerian startup Mono in a rare African fintech exit

Flutterwave, Africa’s largest fintech company, has acquired Nigerian open banking startup Mono in an all-stock deal worth between $25 million and $40 million, according to people familiar with the deal.

This acquisition brings together two of Africa’s leading fintech infrastructure companies. Flutterwave operates one of the continent’s broadest payments networks, while Mono, often described as “Plaid for Africa,” has built APIs that allow businesses to access banking data, initiate payments, and verify customers.

Mono has raised about $17.5 million from investors, including Tiger Global, General Catalyst and Target Global. Sources close to the deal said the acquisition allowed all investors to at least recover their capital, with some early backers achieving returns of up to 20 times. Mono will continue to operate as a standalone product, the companies said in a statement.

Founded in 2020, Mono, like Plaid, uses APIs that allow users to consent to sharing their banking information, enabling financial institutions to analyze income, spending patterns and ability to repay.

The company addresses the lack of uniform access to banking data across African markets, where credit bureaus remain limited and fintech companies, especially lenders, often rely on customers’ banking history to assess creditworthiness.

According to CEO Abdul Hamid Hassan, almost all Nigerian digital lenders now rely on Mono’s infrastructure. The company claims to have operated over 8 million bank account links, covering approximately 12% of Nigeria’s banked population. It also claims to have provided 100 billion financial data points to lending companies and processed millions of direct bank payments. Clients include Visa-backed Moniepoint and GIC-backed PalmPay.

For Flutterwave, which supports 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 identity verifications, bank account verification, data-driven risk assessments, and one-time or recurring bank payments within one package.

Flutterwave CEO Olugbenga ‘GB’ Agboola framed the acquisition as a bet on the next phase of fintech growth in Africa. “Payments, data and trust cannot exist in silos,” he said. “Open banking provides connective tissue, and Mono has built important infrastructure in this area.”

Hassan echoed this view, saying that Africa is entering a credit-driven phase as governments across the continent push financial inclusion initiatives led by lending. This transformation depends on big data infrastructure and regulatory trust, especially in markets like Nigeria, where open banking frameworks are still evolving.

“If the economy is going to depend on credit, you need deep data intelligence to know how people earn and spend,” Hassan said. “But at the same time, for open banking to truly succeed, regulators must be confident that customers’ money is safe.”

Against this backdrop, joining Flutterwave would put Mono in wide scope once the regulatory barriers fall. Flutterwave already operates across dozens of African markets, with local licenses, enterprise customers, and compliance teams.

“This allows us to expand what is possible for businesses operating across African markets while remaining consistent in security, compliance and local relevance,” Agboola said.

The deal mirrors previous consolidation attempts in the global fintech infrastructure, including Visa’s failed acquisition of Plaid in 2020, which was blocked by US regulators. Hassan cited this deal as evidence that the combination of data infrastructure and payment rails can unlock scale.

Both Y Combinator-backed companies are among the backers of Tiger Global (which was the lead investor in Flutterwave’s Series C and Mono’s Series A). But Hassan said the company did not facilitate the deal. Instead, the deal arose from a long-standing working relationship between the two companies, which have partnered on numerous banking payment products over the years.

This collaboration has been implemented against an open banking landscape that has changed significantly 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 in the space, with Okra shutting down and Stitch shifting toward a deeper payments system, allowing it to raise significantly more capital.

Speaking about Mono’s financial situation prior to the acquisition, Hassan said the company, which, according to Pitchbook, raised a $15 million Series A at a post-money valuation of $50 million in 2021, did not have to sell to Flutterwave and is on track to profitability this year. He added that with significant cash reserves, raising another round would have provided new valuations and growth prospects in a difficult financing environment.

However, beyond the two companies in question, the deal – similar to the merger between South African fintechs Lesaka and Adumu – signals a broader inflection point for African fintech, where startups that previously aspired to become stand-alone giants may increasingly find better results by integrating into larger-scale platforms.