The transaction ties Africa’s largest payments company to the country’s most widely used open banking platform at a time when regulation, scale and survival are changing the fintech sector. 

People familiar with the deal say Mono’s investors will at least recover their capital, while some early backers walk away with returns of up to 20 times. Mono will continue to run as a standalone product.

Mono was founded in 2020 to solve a basic problem most African fintechs face, which is that banks do not easily share data. Through its APIs, customers can give consent for businesses to access bank information, verify accounts, analyse income and spending, and trigger payments. 

In a market where credit bureaus are thin and formal credit history is rare, transaction data has become the backbone of digital lending.

That model worked. Mono raised about $17.5 million from investors including Tiger Global, General Catalyst and Target Global. Its chief executive, Abdulhamid Hassan, says almost every digital lender in Nigeria now depends on Mono’s pipes. 

The company says it has enabled more than eight million bank account connections, reaching roughly 12% of Nigeria’s banked population, and has delivered around 100 billion data points to lenders. Its client list includes Visa-backed Moniepoint and GIC-backed PalmPay.

For Flutterwave, the logic is different but just as direct. The company already handles local and cross-border payments across more than 30 African countries. 

In March 2025, it raised $250 million in a Series D round that valued it at $3 billion, cementing its position as Africa’s most valuable startup. It also processed $31 billion in transactions in 2024. Payments alone, however, are no longer enough.

By acquiring Mono, Flutterwave moves deeper into onboarding, identity checks, bank verification, data-led risk assessment, and one-off or recurring bank payments, all within a single stack. This is more important now because Nigeria, its biggest market, has finally switched on open banking.

In August 2025, the Central Bank of Nigeria approved the country’s open banking framework, making Nigeria the first African nation to formally operationalise it. Banks are now required to share customer data through standardised APIs, as long as users give consent. That turns what Mono has been building quietly for years into regulated national infrastructure.

Flutterwave’s chief executive, Olugbenga ‘GB’ Agboola, describes the deal as a long-term play on how African finance will work. “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 agrees that the timing is important. He argues that Africa is moving into a phase where credit, not just payments, will drive financial inclusion. But credit only works if lenders truly understand how people earn and spend, and if regulators trust the systems handling that data.

“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.”

That confidence is still forming. Open banking regulations across Africa are still uneven, and adoption will not happen overnight. 

However, joining Flutterwave gives Mono reach it could not easily build on its own. Flutterwave already operates with licences, compliance teams and enterprise customers across dozens of markets. When regulatory barriers fall, Mono’s tools can scale faster without rebuilding that groundwork country by country.

“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 deal also aligns with a change in African fintech. For years, startups chased the dream of becoming standalone giants. Funding was cheap, growth was rewarded, and consolidation was rare. That world has shifted. Capital is tighter. Regulation is heavier. Scale now matters more than ambition.

In South Africa, Lesaka Technologies bought payments firm Adumo for $96 million in 2024, pulling two major players into one platform. Analysts see Flutterwave and Mono following the same strategy, integration instead of isolation. Globally, the logic is familiar. 

Visa’s attempted $5.3 billion acquisition of Plaid in 2020, though blocked by US regulators, showed how valuable it can be to combine payment rails with data infrastructure.

Mono’s own journey reveals how competitive the space once was. When it launched, it faced companies like Okra and Stitch. Okra shut down in 2025. Stitch pivoted deeper into payments and raised more capital, changing its focus. That left Mono as the clear leader in Nigerian open banking APIs.

Hassan insists Mono was not pushed into a sale. According to PitchBook, the company raised $15 million in a Series A round in 2021 at a $50 million post-money valuation. 

He says Mono is well aligned to reach profitability this year and still has cash in the bank. Raising another round, he adds, would have meant fresh valuation pressure in a tough market.

There is also a shared history. Both companies are backed by Tiger Global, which led Flutterwave’s Series C and Mono’s Series A. Hassan says Tiger did not broker the deal. Instead, it grew from years of collaboration, with Flutterwave and Mono already working together on bank payment products long before acquisition talks began.

African fintech is entering a more mature phase. Infrastructure is consolidating and regulation is meeting up. 

This collaboration between Mono and Mastercard will allow thousands of businesses that already use MPGS to accept account-to-account payments from their customers.

The Mastercard Payment Gateway System is a pinnacle of innovation, offering developers and businesses access to a comprehensive suite of payment methods, APIs, SDKs, and fraud protection services through a single touchpoint. 

Notably, this partnership opens doors for businesses seeking to offer commercial services in Nigeria, providing them with the opportunity to leverage Mono’s cutting-edge account-to-account payment solution. 

Mono’s DirectPay Pay with Bank method ensures fast and secure transactions, enabling businesses to collect payments effortlessly from their users.

For Mono, the collaboration makes its goal seamless, enhancing digital commerce and payments in Africa. The partnership was facilitated by a longstanding relationship, cemented when Mono became the first Nigerian Open Banking company to join the inaugural StartPath Open Banking program in Africa. 

Through this program, Mono gained access to Mastercard’s outstanding technology, network, and expertise.

Mono will now expand the reach and capabilities of its Pay with Bank account-to-account payment offering, as the company is presented with an opportunity to address evolving consumer and business needs, gather valuable feedback from a diverse range of enterprises, deepen its expertise in Open Banking, and contribute to shaping the future of digital payments across the continent.

For Mastercard, the partnership allows the Fintech giant to offer its MPGS customers an innovative new payment method.

This collaboration is expected to play a major role in shaping the future of digital commerce and payments in Africa. In providing businesses with a faster and more secure way to collect payments, Mono and Mastercard are helping to drive financial inclusion and innovation across the continent.

While businesses welcome this new payment solution, consumers can look out for a more seamless and secure digital payment experience, pushing Africa towards a cashless future.

Mono was selected alongside other four companies that will join the network of more than 300 startups that have participated in the award-winning Start Path startup engagement program.

They will have an opportunity to engage with Mastercard’s ecosystem of banks, merchants, partners, and digital players across the globe to deliver and scale open banking solutions.

TechEconomy understands that Mastercard had launched the Start Path Open Banking global program to engage open banking startups on their path to scale, uncover unique opportunities to co-innovate, and powerful experiences that enable consumer choice.

The companies handpicked for this inaugural class (Dapi, Finantier, mmob, Mono and Paywallet) – demonstrate strong synergies with Mastercard’s tech-driven approach and are committed to putting consumers and small businesses at the center of where and how their financial data is used to further access services they want and need.

During the three-month program, startups will have an opportunity to leverage Mastercard’s open banking expertise and market insights and learn more about the company’s open banking platforms through wholly-owned subsidiaries Finicity and Aiia.

As an early advocate of open banking across the globe, Mastercard has bolstered its open banking capabilities by blending its proprietary technology and expertise with the complementary services of Finicity and Aiia.

Mastercard’s market-leading technology platforms, data connectivity and infrastructure, combined with strong data privacy and security principles, provide a global infrastructure that is catalyzing innovation and creating solutions that meet customers where they are.

“Open banking is a natural progression of how Mastercard has always embraced innovation and consumer trust with equal measure, and how we’ve remained a trusted partner for our customers,” said Blake Rosenthal, Executive Vice President, Fintech & Segment Solutions at Mastercard.

“We are thrilled to launch the Start Path Open Banking program and welcome five high-growth startups from around the world to collaborate with us and accelerate open banking innovation.”

From making financial services accessible for all to providing the tools businesses need to build next-generation financial products, the following fast-growing open banking companies have been selected to join the Start Path Open Banking program: