Flutterwave buys Nigerias Mono in rare African fintech exit | TechCrunch

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

The acquisition brings together two of Africa’s leading fintech infrastructure companies. Flutterwave operates one of the continent’s widest payments networks, while Mono, often described as the “Plaid for Africa,” has built APIs that allow businesses to access bank 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 investors to at least recoup their capital, with some early backers seeing paper returns of up to 20x based on the implied valuation of the stock they received from Flutterwave. Mono will continue to operate as an independent product, the companies said in a statement.

Sources close to the deal 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 valuation of the stock they received.

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

The company addresses the lack of standardized access to bank data across African markets, where credit bureaus remain limited and fintechs, especially lenders, often rely on customers’ bank transaction histories to assess creditworthiness.

According to CEO Abdulhamid Hassan, nearly all Nigerian digital lenders now rely on Mono’s infrastructure. The company claims to have powered more than 8 million bank account linkages, covering roughly 12% of Nigeria’s banked population. It also claims to have delivered 100 billion financial data points to lending companies and processed millions in direct bank payments. Customers include Visa-backed Moniepoint and GIC-backed PalmPay.

For Flutterwave, which powers 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 onboarding and identity checks, bank account verification, data-driven risk assessment, and one-time or recurring bank payments within a single stack.

Flutterwave CEO Olugbenga ‘GB’ Agboola framed the acquisition as a 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 echoed that view, arguing that Africa is entering a credit-driven phase as governments across the continent push lending-led financial inclusion initiatives. That transition depends on both substantial data infrastructure and regulatory confidence, 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 confident that customer funds are safe.”

Against that backdrop, joining Flutterwave positions Mono to scale quickly once regulatory barriers fall. Flutterwave already operates across dozens of African markets, with local licenses, enterprise customers, and compliance teams in place.

“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.

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

Both Y Combinator-backed companies count Tiger Global (which was the lead investor in Flutterwave’s Series C and Mono’s Series A) among their backers. Hassan said, however, that the firm did not facilitate the transaction. Instead, the deal grew out of a longstanding working relationship between the two companies, which had partnered on several bank payment products over the years.

That collaboration played out against an open banking landscape that has changed significantly over the past five years.

When Mono launched, it faced competition from companies such as Base10 Partners-backed Okra and Ribbit Capital-backed Stitch. Since then, Mono has emerged as a leading player in the space, following Okra’s shutdown and Stitch’s pivot toward a deeper payments ecosystem play that has allowed it to raise significantly more capital.

Addressing Mono’s financial position ahead of the acquisition, Hassan said the company, which, according to Pitchbook, raised $15 million in Series A at a $50 million post-money valuation in 2021, was not forced into a sale to Flutterwave and is on track toward profitability this year. With significant cash reserves, he added, raising another round would have introduced new valuation and growth expectations in a tough funding environment.

Still, beyond the two companies involved, the transaction — similar to the 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 may increasingly find better outcomes by integrating into scaled platforms.