Africa’s largest fintech company by valuation has made its boldest infrastructure bet yet. Flutterwave has acquired Nigerian open banking startup Mono in an all-stock deal valued between $25 million and $40 million, bringing together two Y Combinator-backed companies that have quietly been building the rails for Africa’s digital economy.
The acquisition, completed in December 2025 but announced today, marks one of the most significant fintech exits in Africa this year and signals a strategic shift in how payments infrastructure is being built across the continent.
The Players
Flutterwave operates one of the continent’s widest payment networks, processing over $40 billion across more than 30 African countries. Its infrastructure powers payments for Uber, PiggyVest, and thousands of businesses across the continent.
Mono, often described as the “Plaid for Africa,” has built APIs that allow businesses to access bank data, initiate payments, and verify customers. Since launching in 2019, the startup has raised $17.5 million from investors including Tiger Global, General Catalyst, and Target Global.
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, and delivered 100 billion financial data points to lending companies. Its customers include Visa-backed Moniepoint and GIC-backed PalmPay.
Why This Deal Matters
The acquisition isn’t just about Flutterwave getting bigger—it’s about building infrastructure for how Africa actually wants to transact.
“Payments, data, and trust cannot exist in silos,” Flutterwave CEO Olugbenga “GB” Agboola said. “Open banking provides the connective tissue, and Mono has built critical infrastructure in this space.”
For Flutterwave, 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.
The strategic logic is clear: card-based payments, while important, aren’t how most Africans transact. Bank transfers, mobile money, and direct account-to-account payments dominate. By owning the open banking layer, Flutterwave positions itself at the center of this shift.
A Rare Exit for Investors
In an ecosystem where successful exits remain scarce, the Mono acquisition stands out. 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 CEO Abdulhamid Hassan told Techpoint Africa that the value is significantly higher than the $17.5 million the company has raised since it launched, suggesting the deal landed closer to the $40 million upper bound.
For context, this is one of the larger fintech acquisitions in Africa in recent years, following Paystack’s acquisition of Brass in 2024 and Moniepoint’s move to acquire Kenya’s Kopo Kopo.
The Competitive Landscape
When Mono launched, it faced competition from companies like Base10 Partners-backed Okra and Ribbit Capital-backed Stitch. The landscape has shifted dramatically 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.
The acquisition also comes as African governments push lending-led financial inclusion initiatives, creating demand for the kind of data infrastructure Mono provides.
Hassan argued that Africa is entering a credit-driven phase. “If the economy is going to be credit-driven, you need deep data intelligence to know how people earn and spend,” he said. “But at the same time, for open banking to really work, regulators need to be confident that customer funds are safe.”
What Happens Next
Mono will continue to operate independently, with no changes to its leadership, team, or day-to-day operations. Existing customers retain access to its APIs, while Flutterwave plans to gradually integrate Mono’s technology into its broader payments stack.
Hassan said the deal grew out of a longstanding working relationship between the two companies, which had partnered on several bank payment products over the years. Both companies count Tiger Global among their backers, though Hassan noted the firm did not facilitate the transaction.
The acquisition was advised by Chrysalis Capital.
For Hassan and his team, joining Flutterwave represents an opportunity to scale beyond what would have been possible independently. “Against that backdrop, joining Flutterwave positions Mono to scale quickly once regulatory barriers fall,” Hassan noted, referencing evolving open banking frameworks across markets like Nigeria.
The Bigger Picture
The Mono acquisition reflects a maturing African fintech ecosystem where consolidation is becoming a strategic necessity. As the continent’s digital economy demands infrastructure that is open by design and built for trust, companies with complementary capabilities are finding more value in combination than in competition.
For businesses building on these rails, the message is clear: Africa’s next generation of financial services won’t be built on cards alone. They’ll be built on authenticated, bank-based payment methods that reflect how the continent actually moves money.
And with this acquisition, Flutterwave is betting it can own that layer.
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