Africa’s largest fintech company Flutterwave acquires Nigerian open banking startup Only in a deal worth a total of between $25 million and $40 million, according to people familiar with the transaction.
The acquisition brings together two of Africa’s leading fintech infrastructure companies. Flutterwave operates one of the continent’s broadest payment networks, while Mono, often described as the “Plaid for Africa,” has built APIs that allow businesses to access bank data, initiate payments and verify customers.
Mono has raised about $17.5 million from investors including Tiger Global, General Catalyst and Target Global. Sources close to the deal said the takeover allowed all its investors to at least recoup their capital, with some early backers making returns of up to 20 times. Mono will continue to operate as a standalone product, the companies said in a statement.
Founded in 2020, Mono, like Plaid, uses APIs that allow users to consent to the sharing of their bank details, allowing financial institutions to analyze income, spending patterns and ability to repay.
The company faces a lack of standardized access to banking data across African markets, where credit bureaus remain limited and fintechs, especially lenders, often rely on customers’ banking history to assess creditworthiness.
According to the CEO Abdulhamid Hasanalmost all digital lenders in Nigeria now rely on Mono’s infrastructure. The company claims to have powered more than 8 million bank account connections, covering about 12% of Nigeria’s bankable population. It also claims to have handed over 100 billion points of financial data to lending companies and processed millions in direct bank payments. Clients include Visa-backed Moniepoint and GIC-backed PalmPay.
For Flutterwave, which powers local and cross-border payments in more than 30 African countries, 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 in one stack.
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CEO of Flutterwave Olugbenga ‘GB’ Agboola framed the acquisition as a bet on the next phase of fintech development in Africa. “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 echoed this view, arguing that Africa is entering a credit-driven phase as governments across the continent push for loan-based financial inclusion initiatives. This transition depends on both substantial data infrastructure and regulatory confidence, particularly in markets like Nigeria where open banking frameworks are still evolving.
“If the economy is going to be based on credit, 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 customers’ funds are safe.”
In this context, joining Flutterwave sets Mono up for rapid scaling once the regulatory hurdles fall. Flutterwave already operates in dozens of African markets, with local licenses, enterprise customers and compliance teams.
“This allows us to expand what is possible for businesses operating in all African markets while remaining committed to security, compliance and local relevance,” said Agboola.
The transaction mirrors previous consolidation efforts in the global fintech infrastructure, including Visa’s failed acquisition of Plaid in 2020, which was blocked by US regulators. Hassan cited this deal as proof that combining data infrastructure with payment rails can unlock scale.
Both Y Combinator-backed companies count Tiger Global (which was the lead investor in Flutterwave’s Series C and Mono’s Series A) among their backers. Hassan said, however, that the company did not facilitate the transaction. Instead, the deal grew out of a long-standing working relationship between the two companies, which had collaborated on several bank payments products over the years.
This partnership worked against an open banking landscape that has changed significantly over the past five years.
When Mono launched, it faced competition from the likes of Base10 Partners-backed Okra and Ribbit Capital-backed Stitch. Since then, Mono has emerged as a leading player in the space, following Close up of okra and Stitch’s shift to a deeper payments ecosystem play that enabled it raise significantly more capital.
Referring to Mono’s financial position prior to the acquisition, Hassan said the company, which, according to Pitchbook, raised $15 million in Series A at a $50 million post-money valuation in 2021, it was not forced to sell to Flutterwave and is on track to be profitable this year. With significant cash on hand, he added, raising another round would have introduced new valuation and growth expectations in a tough funding environment.
However, beyond the two companies involved, the transaction — similar to the integration between South African fintechs Lesaka and Adumo; — marks a broader inflection point for African fintech, where startups that once aspired to become stand-alone giants can find increasingly better results by integrating into scalable platforms.
