Flutterwave, Africa’s most valuable fintech, has acquired Nigerian open banking startup Mono in an all-stock deal valued between $25 million and $40 million, according to sources familiar with the transaction.
The acquisition marks a significant consolidation of fintech infrastructure on the continent. By folding Mono’s data-scraping and payment initiation APIs into its ecosystem, Flutterwave is moving beyond simple payment processing toward a vertically integrated “super-stack” that includes identity verification and credit scoring.
The Deal at a Glance
- Structure: All-stock transaction.
- Valuation: $25m — $40m range.
- Investor Exit: Early backers (including Tiger Global and General Catalyst) reportedly realized returns of up to 20x.
- Operational Status: Mono will continue to operate as a standalone product under the Flutterwave umbrella.
Why Mono? The Search for “Connective Tissue”
Founded in 2020 and often dubbed the “Plaid for Africa,” Mono built the pipes that allow third-party apps to access a user’s bank statement and transaction history (with consent). In a market like Nigeria, where traditional credit bureaus have limited reach, this data is the lifeblood of the digital lending sector.
Flutterwave CEO Olugbenga ‘GB’ Agboola describes the move as a play for “connective tissue.” By owning the data layer, Flutterwave can now offer enterprise clients a seamless onboarding flow:
- Identity: Verify the user via Mono’s KYC tools.
- Risk: Analyze bank statements for creditworthiness.
- Payment: Execute the transaction via Flutterwave’s rails.
“Payments, data, and trust cannot exist in silos,” Agboola said in a statement. “Open banking provides the foundation for the next phase of growth.”
Scaling Through the Credit Gap
Mono’s utility is backed by significant volume. The startup claims to have:
- Powered 8 million bank account linkages.
- Reached roughly 12% of Nigeria’s banked population.
- Processed 100 billion financial data points for lenders.
Mono CEO Abdulhamid Hassan argues that Africa is entering a “credit-driven phase.” As governments push for financial inclusion, fintechs need deep data intelligence to assess how people earn and spend. Joining Flutterwave allows Mono to bypass the “regulatory friction” of expanding into new markets one by one, instead leveraging Flutterwave’s existing licenses in over 30 countries.
A Changing Competitive Landscape
The acquisition follows a period of shakeups in the African open banking space. When Mono launched, it was locked in a “land grab” with competitors like Okra and Stitch.
| Company | Status | Strategy |
| Mono (Nigeria) | Acquired by Flutterwave | Pure-play data and payment initiation. |
| Stitch (South Africa) | Active | Pivoted toward a payments-led ecosystem; raised higher capital. |
| Okra (Nigeria) | Defunct | Ceased operations following market pressures. |
Hassan maintains that Mono was not “forced” into a sale, stating the company was on a path to profitability this year. However, he noted that raising further VC rounds in the current high-interest-rate environment would have created “unrealistic valuation expectations.”
The deal draws parallels to Visa’s attempted $5.3 billion acquisition of Plaid in 2020, which was eventually blocked by US regulators over antitrust concerns. In Africa, however, the regulatory environment for open banking is still in its infancy. By moving early, Flutterwave is positioning itself as the primary gatekeeper for financial data before stricter barriers to entry are established.
The timing of the deal is also particularly telling for Nigeria’s open-banking ecosystem, which is still absorbing the fallout from Okra’s collapse last year. Once positioned as a foundational data layer for fintechs, Okra’s shutdown exposed the fragility of standalone infrastructure plays operating ahead of clear regulation and sustainable unit economics. Flutterwave’s acquisition of Mono suggests that scale, balance-sheet strength and regulatory cover are becoming prerequisites for survival. Rather than a neutral “plumbing layer” serving the entire market, open banking in Nigeria now appears to be tilting toward platform ownership, where data access is bundled with payments, compliance and distribution. For smaller fintechs, this raises questions about dependency and bargaining power — and whether Nigeria’s open-banking future will be defined by interoperability or by a handful of dominant gatekeepers.