Flutterwave buys Nigerian Mono in rare African fintech exit

Africa’s largest fintech company, Flutter Waveacquired a Nigerian open banking startup Mono in an all-stock transaction valued at between $25 million and $40 million, according to people familiar with the matter.

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

Mono a raised approximately $17.5 million with investors including Tiger Global, General Catalyst and Target Global. Sources close to the deal said the acquisition resulted in all of its investors recouping at least their capital, with some of the early backers realizing returns of up to 20x. Mono will continue to operate as an independent product, the companies said in a statement.

Founded in 2020, Mono, like Plaid, uses APIs that allow users to consent to the sharing of their banking information, allowing financial institutions to analyze their income, spending habits and repayment capacity.

The company addresses the lack of standardized access to banking data in African marketswhere credit bureaus remain limited and fintechs, particularly lenders, often rely on customers’ banking history to assess their creditworthiness.

According to the CEO Abdoulhamid Hassanalmost all Nigerian digital lenders now rely on Mono’s infrastructure. The company claims to have created over 8 million banking 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. Customers include Visa-backed Moniepoint and GIC-backed PalmPay.

For Flutterwave, which manages local and cross-border payments in more than 30 African countries, the deal deepens its vertical integration. In addition to payments, the company can now offer onboarding and identity checks, bank account verification, data-driven risk assessment, and one-time or recurring bank payments within a single stack.

CEO of Flutterwave Defender ‘GB’ Agbola presented 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 the connective tissue, and Mono has built critical infrastructure in this space. »

Hassan echoed this view, saying Africa is entering a credit-driven phase as governments across the continent push lending-led financial inclusion initiatives. This transition depends on both substantial data infrastructure and the trust of regulators, particularly in markets like Nigeria, where open banking frameworks are still evolving.

“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 sure that customer funds are safe. »

In this context, joining Flutterwave allows Mono to scale quickly once regulatory barriers are lifted. Flutterwave already operates in dozens of African markets, with local licenses, enterprise customers and compliance teams in place.

“This allows us to expand opportunities for businesses operating in African markets while remaining anchored in security, compliance and local relevance,” Agboola said.

The transaction reflects previous attempts to consolidate the global fintech infrastructure, including Visa’s failed acquisition of Plaid in 2020which was blocked by American regulators. Hassan cited this deal as proof that combining data infrastructure with payment rails can unlock scale.

The two Y Combinator-backed companies include Tiger Global (which was the lead investor in Flutterwave C Series And Mono A Series) among their supporters. Hassan, however, said the company did not facilitate the transaction. Instead, the deal is the result of a long-standing working relationship between the two companies, which had partnered on several bank payment products over the years.

This collaboration took place in 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 become a major player in the sector, following Okra stop and Stitch’s pivot to a deeper payments ecosystem that allowed it to raise a lot more capital.

Addressing Mono’s financial situation prior to the acquisition, Hassan said the company, which Pitchbook reported raised $15M Series A at $50M Post-Funding Valuation in 2021, was not forced to sell to Flutterwave and is on track to profitability this year. With significant cash reserves, he added, a new fundraising would have introduced new expectations for valuation and growth in a challenging financing environment.

However, beyond the two companies involved, the transaction – similar to that consolidation between South African fintechs Lesaka and Adumo – signals a broader inflection point for African fintech, where startups that once aspired to become standalone giants can increasingly achieve better results by integrating with large-scale platforms.