Flutterwave acquires open banking startup Mono

By Vriti Gothi

Flutterwave has acquired Nigerian open banking startup Mono in an all-stock transaction valued between $25 million and $40 million, marking one of the few meaningful exits in Africa’s FinTech infrastructure space.

The deal brings together two core pillars of the continent’s digital financial stack. Flutterwave operates one of Africa’s largest payments networks, enabling local and cross-border transactions across more than 30 countries, while Mono provides APIs that allow businesses to access bank data, verify customers, and initiate bank-based payments.

Mono, founded in 2020, is often compared to Plaid for its role in enabling consent-driven access to bank account information. Its infrastructure addresses a structural gap across African markets, where standardised access to financial data remains limited, and credit bureaus are underdeveloped. As a result, many digital lenders rely on bank transaction histories to assess income, spending behaviour, and repayment capacity.

According to Mono CEO Abdulhamid Hassan, nearly all Nigerian digital lenders now use the company’s infrastructure. Mono claims to have facilitated more than 8 million bank account linkages covering around 12% of Nigeria’s banked population and delivered roughly 100 billion financial data points to lending platforms. Its customers include Visa-backed Moniepoint and GIC-backed PalmPay.

Mono has raised approximately $17.5 million from investors such as Tiger Global, General Catalyst, and Target Global. People familiar with 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 value of Flutterwave stock. Mono will continue to operate as an independent product, the companies said.

For Flutterwave, the acquisition strengthens its push toward vertical integration. Beyond payments, the company can now offer bank account verification, onboarding and identity checks, data-driven risk assessment, and one-time or recurring bank payments within a single platform.

The transaction reflects a broader shift in African FinTech toward infrastructure-led consolidation. As governments across the continent promote lending-led financial inclusion, reliable data access and regulatory confidence are becoming central to the next phase of growth.

Joining Flutterwave gives Mono access to a pan-African operating footprint, including local licenses, enterprise relationships, and compliance capabilities, positioning it to scale more quickly as open banking frameworks mature across the region.