Flutterwave buys Mono for open banking push
Flutterwave, a leading payments-technology firm operating across Africa, announced yesterday, January 5, that it had completed the acquisition of Mono, a company widely recognized as a pioneer in open-banking infrastructure throughout the continent.
The deal will deepen Flutterwave’s commitment to constructing a more connected and interoperable financial system for African users, and it positions open banking as a central element in the ongoing evolution of alternative payment methods in the region.
Expanding Open Banking Capabilities
Mono provides an API-driven platform that grants secure access to identity verification, financial data, and account-to-account payments—features that are essential as African markets shift toward more trusted, data-focused financial services.
Under the terms of the agreement, Mono will continue to operate as an independent entity, and there will be no alterations to the firm’s team, its leadership structure, or its day-to-day operations.
Flutterwave’s stake enables strategic alignment rather than direct operational control, which means that Mono can preserve its rapid pace of innovation while contributing its open-banking infrastructure to the larger payments ecosystem.
Strengthening Payment Capabilities
Flutterwave’s statement explained that the acquisition reflects a growing understanding that the next phase of payments growth in Africa will be driven less by traditional card rails and more by bank-based, authenticated, and locally relevant payment methods.
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By integrating Mono’s open-banking APIs, it strengthens its ability to support faster onboarding, improve verification processes, reduce fraud, and enable seamless account-to-account transfers.
The collaboration creates a pathway for expanding into richer alternative payment methods, authenticated payment flows, and, in the future, open-banking-enabled stablecoin use cases.
Leadership Perspectives
Flutterwave’s founder and chief executive officer, Olugbenga “GB” Agboola, said the acquisition illustrates how the company envisions the future of financial infrastructure across the continent.
Agboola added that payments, data, and trust cannot exist in isolation, that open banking serves as the connective tissue linking these elements, and that Mono has already built critical infrastructure in this space.
Mono’s chief executive officer and founder, Abdulhamid Hassan, noted that he and his team created Mono to unlock Africa’s open-banking potential, and since their first partnership with Flutterwave in 2021, they have witnessed the power of coordinated effort in pursuing that goal.
