Deal of the Week: Flutterwave acquires Mono in Africa's first YC-to-YC exit
2026 kicks off with a bang as Flutterwave, Africa’s largest payments technology company, announces its acquisition of Mono, Nigeria’s leading open banking infrastructure provider.
Deal Structure
Acquirer: Flutterwave (payments processor operating across 30+ African countries)
Target: Mono (open banking API platform)
Deal value: reportedly $25-40M (said to be $30M by insiders)
Deal consideration: all-stock transaction
Transaction advisors:
For Mono: External General Counsel’s Rachna Shah, Goodwin Procter LLP
For Flutterwave: Chrysalis Capital’s Nichole Yembra
Status: Pending regulatory approvals
Post-deal: Mono will continue operating as an independent entity with no changes to leadership, team, or day-to-day operations
Key Personalities
Abdulhamid Hassan, Co-Founder & CEO, Mono
Launched first startup (Washify - ‘Uber for laundromats’) at age 17
Sold another startup, Skylar Labs/Hyphen, for an undisclosed amount
Launched mobile app for offline payments OyaPay
Worked at Paystack as a software engineer
Met Mono co-founder in a programming group on Facebook
Prakhar Singh, Co-Founder & CTO, Mono
Technical architect behind Mono’s infrastructure
Based remotely in India
Olugbenga ‘GB’ Agboola, Founder & CEO, Flutterwave
Since its 2016 launch, Flutterwave has processed over 1B transactions worth over $40B; in 2022 it announced a $3B valuation and proclaimed itself ‘Africa’s most valuable startup’
About Mono
Founded in 2020, Mono has built Africa’s most widely-adopted open banking infrastructure. The company’s API platform enables businesses to securely access bank data, initiate payments, and verify customer identities.
Mono addresses a critical infrastructure gap across African markets where credit bureaus remain limited and financial data remains fragmented. Nearly all Nigerian digital lenders now rely on Mono’s infrastructure.
Founder-problem fit: While at Paystack, Hassan experienced firsthand how limited access to financial data hindered lending and risk assessment. He left the company after its acquisition by Stripe to pursue a specific thesis: that financial data infrastructure, not just payment processing, would power Africa’s next fintech wave. Mono was born from that conviction.
Total capital raised: ~$17.5M
Fundraising timeline & announcements:
Sep 2020: $500K Pre-seed
May 2021: $2M Seed
October 2021: $15M Series A
Investors:
Tiger Global (Series A lead)
Target Global
General Catalyst
SBI Investment
Entrée Capital (Seed round lead)
TCVP
Lateral Frontiers
Ventures Platform
Golden Palm Investments
Ingressive Capital
Rally Cap Ventures
Acuity VC
Y Combinator
Key metrics:
8M+ bank account linkages (said to be roughly 12% of Nigeria’s banked population)
100B+ financial data points delivered to lending companies
Millions in direct bank payments processed
Major customers include Visa-backed Moniepoint and GIC-backed PalmPay
Previous valuation: $50M post-money at 2021 Series A, per Pitchbook — but TechCrunch contemporaneously reported the company’s valuation as “north of $100M.”
Strategic Rationale
For Flutterwave, the acquisition enhances its offering and gives it the ability to facilitate authenticated, account-to-account flows and instant identity verification. The company can now offer end-to-end infrastructure within a single stack:
Payments processing (existing capability)
KYC and identity verification (via Mono)
Bank account verification (via Mono)
Data-driven risk assessment (via Mono)
Account-to-account payments (via Mono)
One-time and recurring direct bank payments (via Mono)
For Mono, joining Flutterwave provides immediate scale and distribution, plus the ability to wait for the open banking landscape to ripen. Flutterwave’s existing presence across 30+ African markets, local licenses, enterprise customer relationships, and compliance infrastructure positions Mono to expand rapidly once regulatory frameworks mature.
The deal also creates a unified environment where payments and financial data coexist, reducing complexity for developers and accelerating time-to-market for new products.
The Competitive Landscape
When Mono launched in 2020, Nigeria’s open banking space included several well-funded competitors:
Okra (Base10 Partners-backed, raised $16.5M) — shut down May 2025 after regulatory delays and currency challenges
Stitch (Ribbit Capital-backed) — pivoted toward deeper payments ecosystem, raised significantly more capital
Mono’s acquisition for roughly $30M — after raising at a $50M valuation — is the latest shoe to drop for the continent’s open banking pioneers.
Open banking may be the future, but first movers have faced real challenges.
In Their Own Words
Hassan (Mono CEO): “An acquisition was not on our radar. Mono’s growth curve, product, and team are stronger than ever, and the future of open banking has never been more exciting…
We chose to join forces with Flutterwave because of the opportunity to create something phenomenal together: a more complete financial operating system for African businesses. Together, we can go deeper, move faster, and serve developers and businesses at scale.”
Agboola (Flutterwave CEO): “This acquisition is about building the connective tissue for Africa’s next phase of fintech growth. Payments, data, and trust cannot exist in silos. Open banking provides the foundation, and Mono has built critical infrastructure in this space…
By bringing Mono’s world-class open banking and accounts-based payment infrastructure into the Flutterwave ecosystem, we are doing more than just adding a tool; we are upgrading the engine.”
Why The Deal Matters
Major consolidation signal. This transaction could indicate that African fintech is entering a renewed consolidation phase as the obstacles to achieving venture scale outcomes in certain verticals become more apparent.
Account-to-account payments in Africa. Flutterwave is betting the next phase of growth in African payments comes from bank rails, not cards. Flutterwave already powers card, mobile money, and cross-border payments; Mono adds the direct bank payment layer that bypasses traditional card infrastructure entirely.
The rise of pragmatism. Mono chose strategic consolidation with an industry leader rather than pursuing standalone success which would require additional capital and introduce commensurate growth pressures in an uncertain market.
Deal Note
Illiquid-to-illiquid swap, not cash exit: Despite media reports of ‘liquidity for investors,’ the all-stock transaction means Mono investors swapped positions in a Series A fintech for equity in a larger, more mature (but still private) platform.
Paper gains: Some early Mono investors are said to have seen 20x returns with the deal, but these are unrealized gains tied to Flutterwave’s current valuation. With Flutterwave’s CEO stating ‘we're not in the IPO race’ last month, the path to actual liquidity isn’t yet clear.
Relative sizes: Assuming valuations of $3 billion and $30 million for Flutterwave and Mono respectively, the acquisition cost Flutterwave 1% in equity.
Trivia
This marks the first time two Y Combinator-backed companies have completed an acquisition in Africa.
Both companies count Tiger Global among their investors, but the deal grew from a multi-year product partnership starting in 2021, not investor matchmaking.
Additional Resources
Bottom line: This deal offers a reminder that timing is everything. While open banking remains promising as a vertical, Africa’s first wave of open banking upstarts have faced real challenges as they’ve had to innovate ahead of regulations and widespread adoption.
The acquisition positions the combined Flutterwave-Mono entity as the dominant open banking infrastructure player across anglophone West Africa, with the time and resources to see the open banking landscape and regulatory environment develop.
The deal also signals the ongoing maturation of fintech infrastructure in Africa as best-in-class providers consolidate into comprehensive platforms.
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