Flutterwave acquires Mono for $30 million in all-stock deal. Here is some backstory.

Flutterwave has today announced its acquisition of Mono in an all-stock deal. The deal is reportedly valued at $30 million, according to sources familiar with the matter who provided Condia with advance notice in December 2025.

“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,” Olugbenga ‘GB’ Agboola, Founder and CEO of Flutterwave, said.

Mono’s Founder and CEO, Abdulhamid Hassan, said that, “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.”

Mono will continue to operate independently, with no changes to its leadership structure, team, or day-to-day operations.

Know more about Flutterwave and Mono

Flutterwave is a YC-backed Africa-focused payments company that is popular for its payment gateway and record-breaking $3 billion valuation from its Series D raise (2022).

Mono is a YC-backed company that pioneered open banking payments, alongside other players like Okra and Stitch, which have since pivoted away from the open banking-first approach. Okra shut down its open banking business, while Stitch is now processing card transactions, similar to Flutterwave. Mono remains as the survivor of that class with claims to have linked 8 million bank accounts in over three countries. Assuming 90% of those bank accounts are in Nigeria, its home country, then Mono has linked 2% of the country’s active bank accounts. They also launched several other products in identity, fraud and payments (direct debit).

In 2021, Mono announced its $15 million Series A. “This raise brings Mono’s total outside funding to $17.6M,” the company said in a blog post.

Mono also announced its partnership with Flutterwave to launch Pay with Bank as a payment method on the latter’s checkout page.

Other than the news-grabbing fundraising headlines, both companies have raised secondaries. Data from PitchBook reveals that Mono had a private secondary transaction, which released liquidity for some stakeholders, including the founder and CEO. Mono’s founder later invested in Grey, Abeg (acquired by Piggyvest) and other startups. Likewise, PitchBook states that Flutterwave sold secondaries in July 2022, with subsequent transactions occurring in March 2023, and as recently as January 2025. Early-stage investor, Launch Africa, bought some Flutterwave shares and now lists the company as part of its Seed Fund II portfolio.

The $30 million exit and what comes next?

Not all Mono stakeholders are celebrating. Investors owned about 35% of Mono, since the startup’s last anchor valuation during the ZIRP era was $50 million. Series A investors, who put in $15 million, would own about a quarter of the company. For these investors, anything short of $150 million, which is about 10x their investment, would not be deemed a winner.

So, a $30 million exit valuation is disappointing for some. However, in the high-risk startup investment world where most companies’ valuations go to zero, this is not the worst place to be in. Being able to return the capital invested is valued, especially in this time of valuation reset and market correction.

What further complicates the situation is that the acquisition deal was all-stock, so no real cash exchanged hands. Using the time value of money concept, some investors would have preferred to close their positions now by collecting cash. However, an all-stock deal further prolongs their return lifecycle and ties their fate to that of Flutterwave, the acquirer.

If the $30 million was at Flutterwave’s $3 billion valuation, then Mono’s investors hold roughly 1% of Flutterwave’s shares at an unknown share price. The movement of Flutterwave’s valuation and timing of a liquidity event would determine if investors truly get $30 million worth of exit, more or less. Thus, investors in Mono would join the crowd in mounting pressure on Flutterwave for a liquidity event, which has historically been an IPO, given the amount the company has raised. Although Flutterwave CEO has now said the company is focused more on profitability, but won’t rule out an acquisition.

Regardless, the very early investors in Mono are poised to win, as they would have entered at a very modest valuation. TechCrunch cites that some early backers will see returns of up to 20x.

Flutterwave’s vertical integration play and Mono’s new treasury product

Think of Flutterwave as the rail, and Mono putting more trains on that rail.

Flutterwave’s reach extends to over 35 markets. In Nigeria, it’s a licensed payments and remittance operator, while in the 35 U.S states it’s a money transmitter (MTL) and has regulated partnerships in Cameroon, Egypt, Ethiopia and South Africa, amongst others.

While they focus on enabling money in, within and out of those countries, Mono can help Flutterwave deepen the products that can be built on top of the money movement rails. For instance, Mono will help Flutterwave to explore open banking-enabled stablecoin use cases, a new strategic focus for the mothership.

Mono’s CEO Hassan also said that they will be launching a treasury management platform that allows businesses manage all their bank accounts in one place. “We’re going to be launching a treasury management platform that will allow enterprises to manage all their bank balances in one place because we already have that infrastructure. We’re now opening it up as a platform as a service,” said Mono CEO Abdulhamid Hassan in an interview with Techpoint Africa.

According to Hassan, the treasury management tool is just one of several products in the pipeline as the startup seeks to create more enterprise solutions by capitalising on its experience connecting financial institutions with customer data.

While this exit comes with mixed reactions for investors, it seems to bode well for customers, just like Brass’s exit to a Paystack-led consortium.

Several venture capitalists have predicted that the next frontier of Africa’s exits will be mergers and acquisitions, building up from the 66 M&As that occurred in 2025.