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. 

The fresh round, which was led by Portage, boosts the company’s total equity funding to $105 million and comes after a quick climb in Flex’s numbers over the past year. 

Revenue has surged, and annual payments flowing through the platform have jumped to $3 billion. The company says more owners of middle-market firms are turning to its system to manage both company and personal finances in one place.

Flex’s latest funding closely follows a $200 million debt raise and an earlier $25 million equity injection. It also arrives on the same day the firm launches Flex Elite, an invite-only consumer card positioned as a direct challenger to Amex’s exclusive Centurion card. 

The card sits at the centre of Flex’s aim to act as a “private bank” for business owners with sizeable personal and commercial interests.

The company is targeting owners whose firms generate between $3 million and $100 million in annual revenue, an often-ignored segment that employs roughly two out of every five American workers. 

Many in this group juggle several financial systems at once, a gap Flex says it is now filling with a suite that covers business credit, payments, expense control, personal spending, and back-office tools.

Flex has been developing a range of automated finance agents to support these products. They handle tasks such as underwriting, payments, expense checks and cash management. 

All of these tools feed into what the company calls a central “motherboard” for owners, aimed at giving them a cleaner view of how their businesses and personal finances move each day.

Credit is a major pillar of the company’s strategy. Its underwriting system is designed to assess risk in real time and help Flex serve customers who struggle to get flexible credit from mainstream banks and large fintech firms. 

With more owners taking up Flex’s business credit card, which offers a 60-day interest-free period on spending, they usually adopt other parts of the platform, helping the company scale with fewer staff and lower operating costs.

Outlining the company’s goal, Founder and CEO Zaid Rahman said: “Our mission is to build the private bank ambitious business owners have always deserved.” He added: “Middle-market business owners employ 40% of Americans, but the financial system has never been designed around their complex needs. Flex is the first platform that supports every step of their financial lives, from the moment they earn revenue to the moment they spend it personally. Unlike many of our FinTech peers who focus on saving large enterprises money, we focus on helping ambitious owners make more money.”

Portage partner Jake Bodanis said the firm is backing Flex because it sees a gap in the market and strong growth potential. “Flex is building a category-defining financial institution,” he said. “The company has proven that middle-market business owners are both massively underserved and extremely valuable customers when given the right financial infrastructure. Flex’s hypergrowth and best-in-class capital efficiency speak to how powerful this model is.”

Flex says it hopes to become the central financial hub for this class of business owners, supporting everything from daily operations to long-term wealth transfers.

The humanoid robot, known as Uri, made its debut last week at Harvard University, drawing massive attention as the new CMO led Series’ first campus marketing campaign. 

From taking over Harvard Square with a giant student composite banner to parading the stands during the Harvard versus Brown football game, Uri quickly became the centre of attraction. The spectacle generated more than one million views across social media within 24 hours.

Uri, powered by the Unitree G1 humanoid system, is built with 43 degrees of freedom, 3D LiDAR sensors, depth cameras, and reinforcement learning that allows it to adapt to real-time human interactions. It stands 1.2 metres tall and has been programmed to engage with users both offline and online in ways that mimic human marketers.

During the campaign, Uri didn’t just pose for photos, the robot handed out matcha drinks to students, initiated conversations, and roamed the stadium stands, a mix of spectacle and brand promotion that left many in awe.

Nathaneo Johnson, CEO and co-founder of Series, explained the logic behind the appointment. “Most CMOs cost $100k – $300k a year. Ours is a fraction of that, and it gains more attention than most celebrities do in any given room. That’s marketing.”

Series, launched as a platform to connect students and professionals, has already facilitated more than 700,000 messages exchanged with a 95% match acceptance rate. The company says that Uri is more than a novelty act, but part of a long-term strategy to enhance how technology can drive human connection.

Johnson added: “This move reflects our belief that robotics and AI will co-create the future of connection. Uri’s capabilities are far beyond novelty, which reflects the culture of constant innovation that will come to define today’s most ambitious startups.”

In placing robotics at the centre of its growth, Series is testing how far human-robot collaboration can go, not just in automating tasks, but in building strategy and public engagement. For a generation that thrives on digital-first interaction, Uri may be the next frontier of marketing leadership.