Flutterwave, Africa’s largest fintech company, has acquired Nigerian open banking startup Mono in an all-stock transaction valued between $25 million and $40 million.
The acquisition brings together two major fintech infrastructure players as Flutterwave looks to strengthen its payments stack with open banking, data, and identity capabilities.
Under the deal, Mono will continue to operate as an independent product, with no changes to its leadership or operations.
The transaction allows Mono’s investors to at least recoup their capital, with some early backers reportedly recording returns of up to 20x.
What they are saying
Flutterwave disclosed that Mono’s platform provides secure access to financial data, identity verification, and account-to-account payment services—capabilities increasingly seen as critical as African markets move toward authenticated and bank-based payment methods.
Speaking on the acquisition, Flutterwave’s Founder and CEO, Olugbenga ‘GB’ Agboola, said the deal reflects the company’s long-term view of Africa’s financial infrastructure.
“Payments, data, and trust cannot exist in silos. Open banking provides the connective tissue, and Mono has built critical infrastructure in this space. This acquisition allows us to expand what’s possible for businesses operating across African markets, while staying grounded in security, compliance, and local relevance,” Agboola said.
Mono’s Founder and CEO, Abdulhamid Hassan, noted that the acquisition builds on an existing relationship between both companies, which began with a partnership in 2021.
“Mono’s capabilities across financial data access, direct bank payments, and identity verification, combined with Flutterwave’s unmatched scale and global reach, create something more defensible and comprehensive,” Hassan stated.
More details on the acquisition
Flutterwave said the integration of Mono’s open banking APIs will strengthen its ability to support faster merchant onboarding, improved verification processes, reduced fraud, and seamless account-to-account payments across multiple African markets.
- Beyond payments, the collaboration is expected to simplify compliance-heavy processes for businesses, including identity checks and bank verification.
- Developers and ecosystem partners are also expected to benefit from a more unified environment where payments and financial data infrastructure coexist, reducing complexity and speeding up product development.
- The companies added that the acquisition also enhances Flutterwave’s vertical depth, with potential benefits including stronger margins, deeper platform stickiness, and more differentiated infrastructure.
- From a regulatory perspective, the deal supports increased standardization, improved data protection, and compliance with global security standards such as PCI-DSS and ISO 27001.
Why this matters
Africa’s fintech ecosystem is increasingly shifting away from card-dominated payment systems toward bank-based, authenticated, and alternative payment methods.
Open banking is emerging as a critical enabler of this transition, supporting trusted data sharing, account-to-account payments, and new financial products.
By acquiring Mono, Flutterwave is positioning itself to play a more central role in shaping this next phase of Africa’s payments growth, particularly as demand rises for interoperable systems that can support scale, compliance, and innovation across borders.
What you should know
Open banking remains at an early stage in many African markets, but is increasingly viewed as foundational infrastructure for fintech innovation, alternative payments, and future use cases such as open banking-enabled digital assets and stablecoins.
Speaking in a recent interview with Nairametrics, Mono CEO, Abdulhamid Hassan, shared how he left Paystack to establish Mono in 2020.
Back then, open banking was not yet a buzzword in Nigeria, but Hassan saw what others didn’t: that data, not just payments, would power the next generation of fintech.
According to him, five years later, Mono has processed over 150 billion transactions through its platform, served more than 7 million users, and expanded into Kenya and Ghana.
