Flutterwave targets 8m accounts with $40m Mono acquisition

Flutterwave’s $40 million acquisition of Nigerian open banking startup, Mono, is targeted at unlocking access to more than eight million bank account linkages and over 100 billion financial data points generated across Nigeria’s digital economy, BusinessDay findings have revealed.

Those figures sit at the core of Flutterwave’s strategic rationale. While payment volumes signal transaction flow, bank linkages and data points reveal behaviour, that is, how money is earned, spent, saved, and repaid.

In a credit-hungry economy where formal credit histories are limited, the behavioural data has become one of fintech’s most valuable assets.

Mono, founded in 2020, does not operate a consumer app or count subscribers. Instead, it sells infrastructure. Through Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), Mono allows fintechs, lenders, payroll platforms, and marketplaces to ask users, explicitly and with consent, to connect their bank accounts. Each successful connection creates what the company calls a ‘bank account linkage.’

Over time, those linkages accumulated across hundreds of Mono’s business clients. According to the company, more than eight million bank accounts have been linked through its systems, equivalent to roughly 12 percent of Nigeria’s banked population.

The number reflects unique bank connections enabled via Mono’s partners, rather than active users on a single platform and illustrates how deeply Mono’s infrastructure has penetrated Nigeria’s fintech stack, largely invisible to end users.

Flutterwave’s acquisition effectively brings those pipes under its umbrella.

Every time a linked bank account is queried, Mono’s APIs transmit granular information such as transaction histories, inflows and outflows, balances, income patterns, and identity markers. When multiplied across millions of accounts and repeated daily by lenders and fintechs monitoring customer behaviour, those interactions generate vast volumes of data.

Mono said it has now delivered over 100 billion individual financial data points to its partners. The number is cumulative, reflecting years of repeated API calls rather than a snapshot of stored records. This underscores frequency of use as much as raw scale: digital lenders checking repayment behaviour, payroll firms verifying salaries, and fintechs monitoring account activity in real time.

The usage has been driven by Mono’s position as core infrastructure for Nigeria’s digital lending ecosystem. With limited coverage from traditional credit bureaus, lenders have leaned heavily on bank transaction data to assess borrowers. Mono’s tools allow them to analyse income stability, spending patterns, and cash-flow volatility before approving loans.

According to Abdulhamid Hassan, CEO, Mono, nearly all Nigerian digital lenders rely on the company’s infrastructure in some form. Its client list includes Visa-backed Moniepoint, GIC-backed PalmPay, and dozens of consumer credit, SME lending, and financial management platforms.

In total, Mono services more than 200 business customers and partners, a figure that helps to explain how its data footprint expanded so rapidly. Each business integrates Mono once, but may onboard thousands or millions of users over time, compounding the number of bank linkages and data calls.

For Flutterwave, absorbing the infrastructure marks a decisive shift beyond payments. The company already processes card and bank transactions across more than 30 African countries. With Mono, it can now offer income verification, account ownership checks, recurring bank debits, and data-driven risk assessment as part of a single platform.

“This acquisition is about building the connective tissue for Africa’s next phase of fintech growth. Payments, data, and trust cannot exist in silos,” said Olugbenga ‘GB’ Agboola, Flutterwave CEO.

The deal also reflects broader consolidation trends in fintech infrastructure globally. Combining payment and data access mirror attempts in other markets, including Visa’s blocked bid for U.S. open-banking firm Plaid in 2020. In Africa, where regulatory frameworks for open banking are still evolving, scale and compliance capacity are becoming increasingly important.

Hassan said joining Flutterwave positions Mono to expand faster once regulatory clarity improves. Flutterwave already operates across multiple jurisdictions with licences, compliance teams, and enterprise relationships in place – advantages that standalone infrastructure startups often struggle to build.

Under the agreement, Mono will continue to operate as an independent product while being integrated into Flutterwave’s broader stack. The acquisition also offers a rare liquidity event for African startup investors amid a prolonged funding slowdown.

Mono raised about $17.5 million from investors, including Tiger Global, General Catalyst, and Target Global, with sources saying the deal allowed early backers to realise significant returns.

For Flutterwave, the Mono acquisition is ultimately a bet that the next phase of African fintech growth will be defined less by who moves money fastest and more by who controls the data layers that make credit, commerce, and financial inclusion possible.

In targeting eight million bank links and 100 billion data points, Flutterwave is not chasing subscribers, it is anchoring its future in the infrastructure that sits beneath Africa’s digital economy.(BusinessDay)