Flutterwave Acquires Mono in Rare African Fintech Exit
Flutterwave 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 marks one of the most significant fintech exits in Africa in recent years, a region where mergers and acquisitions remain relatively uncommon.
The deal brings together two companies operating at the core of Africa’s financial infrastructure. Flutterwave runs one of the continent’s most extensive payment networks, while Mono has built critical data infrastructure that enables fintechs and financial institutions to access bank information, initiate payments, and verify customers.
Mono will continue to operate as an independent product following the acquisition, the companies said.
A Convergence of Payments and Open Banking
Flutterwave powers local and cross-border payments for businesses across more than 30 African countries. Mono, often compared to U.S.-based Plaid, focuses on open banking infrastructure, providing APIs that allow users to consent to sharing their bank data with third-party applications.
Founded in 2020, Mono enables financial institutions to analyse income patterns, spending behaviour, and repayment capacity using real customer transaction data. This capability has become increasingly important across African markets, where access to standardised credit data remains limited.
In many countries, lenders rely heavily on bank transaction histories to assess creditworthiness, particularly as traditional credit bureaus fail to capture large segments of the population.
Mono has raised approximately $17.5 million from investors, including Tiger Global, General Catalyst, and Target Global. Sources close to the transaction say the acquisition allowed investors to recover their invested capital, with some early backers recording paper returns of up to 20x based on the implied value of Flutterwave shares received.
Both companies count Tiger Global among their investors. The firm led Flutterwave’s Series C and Mono’s Series A, though Mono CEO Abdulhamid Hassan said Tiger Global did not facilitate the transaction. Instead, the deal emerged from a long-standing commercial relationship between the two startups, which had collaborated on several bank payment products over the years.
Mono’s Role in Nigeria’s Lending Ecosystem
Mono was built to address the lack of standardised access to bank data across African financial systems. By allowing users to securely share banking information, the company enables lenders to make more informed credit decisions.
According to Hassan, nearly all Nigerian digital lenders now rely on Mono’s infrastructure. The company claims to have powered more than 8 million bank account connections, representing roughly 12 per cent of Nigeria’s banked population. It also says it has delivered over 100 billion financial data points to lending companies and processed millions of dollars in direct bank payments.
Mono’s customers include Visa-backed Moniepoint and GIC-backed PalmPay.
Deepening Flutterwave’s Platform Capabilities
For Flutterwave, the acquisition represents a move toward deeper vertical integration. Beyond payments, the company can now offer onboarding tools, identity verification, bank account validation, data-driven risk assessment, and both one-time and recurring bank payments within a single platform.
Flutterwave CEO Olugbenga ‘GB’ Agboola described the acquisition as a strategic bet on the next phase of fintech growth in Africa.
Payments, data, and trust cannot exist in silos, Agboola said. Open banking provides the connective tissue, and Mono has built critical infrastructure in this space.
The Shift Toward Credit-Driven Financial Inclusion
Hassan framed the deal within the context of Africa’s gradual shift toward a credit-driven economy. Governments across the continent are increasingly promoting lending-led financial inclusion, a transition that depends on reliable data infrastructure and regulatory confidence.
If the economy is going to be credit-driven, you need deep data intelligence to know how people earn and spend, Hassan said. But at the same time, for open banking to really work, regulators need to be confident that customer funds are safe.
By joining Flutterwave, Mono gains access to an established pan-African footprint, including local licences, enterprise clients, and compliance teams. This positioning allows the company to scale rapidly as open banking frameworks continue to evolve across the continent.
This allows us to expand what’s possible for businesses operating across African markets while staying grounded in security, compliance, and local relevance, Agboola said.
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Consolidation Signals a Maturing Market
The transaction mirrors broader consolidation trends in global fintech infrastructure, including Visa’s attempted acquisition of Plaid in 2020, which was ultimately blocked by U.S. regulators. Hassan pointed to that deal as evidence of the strategic value in combining payment rails with financial data platforms.
The open banking landscape in Africa has also shifted significantly since Mono launched. Early competitors such as Okra have shut down, while Stitch has pivoted toward a payments-centric model that has enabled it to raise substantially more capital.
Addressing Mono’s financial position, Hassan said the company was not forced into a sale. PitchBook data shows Mono raised a $15 million Series A in 2021 at a $50 million post-money valuation, and Hassan noted the company is on track to reach profitability this year. With healthy cash reserves, raising another funding round would have introduced new valuation and growth pressures in a difficult fundraising environment.
Beyond the companies involved, the deal signals a broader inflection point for African fintech. As the market matures, startups that once aimed to become standalone giants may increasingly find stronger outcomes by integrating into larger, scaled platforms.
