Flutterwave expands open banking, acquires Mono
Africa’s largest fintech company, Flutterwave, has acquired Nigerian open banking start-up Mono in an all-stock deal, it said in a blog post on Monday. Flutterwave did not disclose the financial value of the transaction.
The deal deepens the company’s long-term commitment to building a connected, interoperable financial system for Africa and positions open banking as a core pillar in the evolution of alternative payment methods across the region.
Founded in 2020, Mono’s API-driven platform enables secure access to financial data, identity verification, and account-to-account payments; capabilities that are increasingly critical as African markets move towards more trusted, data-led financial services.
The fintech giant said that under the terms of the acquisition, Mono will continue to operate independently, with no changes to its leadership structure, team, or day-to-day operations.
Flutterwave’s stake enables strategic alignment rather than operational control, allowing Mono to maintain its pace of innovation while contributing its open banking infrastructure to Flutterwave’s broader payments ecosystem.
Commenting on the acquisition, Founder and CEO of Flutterwave, Olugbenga ‘GB’ Agboola, said: “This acquisition reflects how we think about the future of financial infrastructure in Africa. Payments, data, and trust cannot exist in silos.
Open banking provides the connective tissue, and Mono has built critical infrastructure in this space. This acquisition allows us to expand what’s possible for businesses operating across African markets, while staying grounded in security, compliance, and local relevance.”
The acquisition reflects a growing recognition that the next phase of Africa’s payments growth will be driven less by card rails and more by bank-based, authenticated, and locally relevant payment methods.
By integrating Mono’s open banking APIs, Flutterwave strengthens its ability to support faster onboarding, improved verification, reduced fraud, and seamless account-to-account payments. The collaboration also creates a clear pathway for expanding into richer alternative payment methods, authenticated payment flows, and, over time, open banking-enabled stablecoin use cases.
It also carries implications well beyond product expansion. Businesses gain access to infrastructure that simplifies compliance-heavy processes such as identity checks and bank verification, while improving conversion and reliability at scale.
Developers and partners benefit from a unified environment where payments and financial data coexist, reducing complexity and accelerating time to market. The integration enhances Flutterwave’s vertical depth, reinforcing long-term value creation through stronger margins, deeper platform stickiness, and differentiated infrastructure. Regulatory stakeholders benefit from increased standardisation, stronger data protection, and adherence to global security frameworks, including PCI-DSS and ISO 27001.
Adding to this, Founder and CEO of Mono, Abdulhamid Hassan, said, “We built Mono to unlock Africa’s open banking potential, and since our first partnership with Flutterwave in 2021 and working together over the years, we’ve seen the power of a coordinated effort towards this goal.
“Mono’s capabilities across financial data access, direct bank payments, and identity verification, combined with Flutterwave’s unmatched scale and global reach, create something more defensible and comprehensive. This acquisition allows us to build the infrastructure layer that powers the next generation of African fintech at the speed and scale the continent deserves.”
At a time when Africa’s digital economy is demanding infrastructure that is open by design and built for trust, the investment signals a deliberate move towards systems that are interoperable, data-driven, and designed to support long-term growth across the continent.
The transaction was advised by Nichole Yembra, Founder and Managing Partner at The Chrysalis Advisors Africa, who supported the parties through strategic positioning and execution.
