Africa’s largest fintech company, Flutterwave, has acquired Nigerian open banking startup Mono in an all-stock transaction valued between $25 million and $40 million, marking one of the most significant infrastructure-focused deals in Africa’s fintech space in recent years.
The acquisition brings together two major players at the core of Africa’s digital finance ecosystem. Flutterwave runs one of the continent’s widest payment networks, supporting local and cross-border transactions across more than 30 African countries, while Mono has built open banking APIs that allow businesses to access bank data, initiate payments, and verify customers.
Mono, often described as the “Plaid for Africa,” has raised about $17.5 million from investors including Tiger Global, General Catalyst, and Target Global. Sources familiar with the transaction said the deal allowed all investors to at least recoup their capital, with some early backers recording returns of up to 20 times their initial investment. The company will continue to operate as an independent product under Flutterwave.
Founded in 2020, Mono addresses a longstanding gap in African financial systems, where access to standardised bank data remains limited, and credit bureaus are often underdeveloped. Its APIs allow users to consent to sharing their bank information, enabling lenders and financial institutions to analyse income patterns, spending behavior,r and repayment capacity, a function that has become central to digital lending and SME financing.
According to Mono’s chief executive officer, Abdulhamid Hassan, nearly all digital lenders in Nigeria rely on the company’s infrastructure. Mono says it has powered more than eight million bank account linkages, covering about 12 per cent of Nigeria’s banked population, delivered over 100 billion financial data points to lending platforms, and processed millions of direct bank payment transactions. Its customers include Moniepoint and PalmPay.
For Flutterwave, the acquisition strengthens its push beyond payments into deeper financial infrastructure. By integrating Mono’s data and verification capabilities, the company can now offer onboarding, identity checks, bank account verification, data-driven risk assessment and one-time or recurring bank payments within a single platform. Flutterwave CEO Olugbenga ‘GB’ Agboola described the deal as a strategic bet on the next phase of fintech growth on the continent, noting that payments, data and trust must work together rather than exist in silos.
Hassan said the deal reflects a broader shift across Africa toward credit-led financial inclusion, driven by government policy and the growing demand for financing by individuals and small businesses. He noted that for credit-driven economies to function effectively, lenders need deep, reliable data on how people earn and spend, while regulators must be confident that customer funds and data are secure, particularly in markets like Nigeria, where open banking frameworks are still evolving.
By joining Flutterwave, Mono gains access to a pan-African operating footprint with established licenses, enterprise customers and compliance systems, positioning it to scale rapidly as regulatory clarity improves across markets. Both companies said the combination would allow them to expand financial access for businesses operating across borders while maintaining strong security and compliance standards.
The transaction mirrors earlier attempts at consolidation in global fintech infrastructure, including Visa’s blocked acquisition of Plaid in 2020, which highlighted the strategic value of combining data infrastructure with payment rails. Both Flutterwave and Mono are backed by Tiger Global, though Hassan said the investor did not facilitate the deal, which instead grew out of a long-standing product partnership between the two companies.
The acquisition also reflects a broader inflection point for African fintech. As funding conditions tighten and competition intensifies, startups that once aimed to scale independently are increasingly finding stronger outcomes by integrating into larger, established platforms. For MSMEs and digital lenders, the deal signals a future where payments, data and credit infrastructure are more tightly connected, potentially improving access to finance, reducing friction and supporting business growth across the continent.
