Flutterwave Acquires Mono to Boost Open Banking, Payments Infrastructure in Africa

James Emejo in Abuja

Flutterwave, a leading fintech company, has acquired Mono, an African open banking and account-based payments provider.The strategic move aimed to strengthen Flutterwave’s payments infrastructure and accelerate the growth of open banking in Africa, focusing on interoperability, data-driven solutions, and locally relevant payment methods.The acquisition will allow for faster onboarding, reduced fraud, and seamless account-to-account payments, while also offering businesses access to simplified compliance and developers a unified environment.Flutterwave, declared the acquisition to reinforce it’s payments infrastructure, thereby solidifying its position within the rapidly evolving African financial landscape.Founder and Chief Executive of Flutterwave, Olugbenga Agboola, emphasised the importance of a unified system that integrates payments, data, and trust to support Africa’s financial future, with open banking providing the critical connective tissue.He stated that the acquisition would empower businesses operating within African markets while ensuring security, compliance, and local relevance.The acquisition marked a significant step towards the firm’s long-term vision of constructing an interconnected, interoperable financial ecosystem for Africa, with open banking at its core.The integration is poised to redefine alternative payment methods across the continent, paving the way for more efficient and secure financial transactions.Mono’s API-driven platform is central to the strategy, providing secure access to financial data, robust identity verification, and facilitating account-to-account payments – essential capabilities as African markets increasingly embrace data-led financial services and a shift away from traditional card-based transactions, according to a statement.Under the terms of the acquisition, Mono will retain its operational independence, including its existing leadership team and day-to-day operations.The strategic approach ensures that Mono can continue to innovate at its current pace while contributing its open banking infrastructure to Flutterwave’s broader payments ecosystem.Flutterwave’s investment allows for strategic alignment rather than operational control, thus fostering Mono’s continued innovation within the open banking sphere.Flutterwave anticipates that the next wave of payments growth in Africa will be driven primarily by bank-based, authenticated payment methods tailored for local relevance rather than reliance on card rails.By incorporating Mono’s open banking APIs, Flutterwave is set to bolster its capacity for expedited onboarding processes, improved verification procedures, minimized fraud instances, and seamless account-to-account payment solutions.The collaboration also opens avenues for expansion into a wider range of alternative payment methods, authenticated payment flows, and potentially, open banking-enabled stablecoin applications in the future.The implications of the acquisition extend far beyond product expansion, offering businesses access to infrastructure that simplifies compliance-intensive processes such as identity checks and bank verification, improving overall conversion rates and ensuring reliability at scale.Furthermore, developers and partners will benefit from a unified environment where payments and financial data coexist seamlessly, thus reducing complexity and accelerating time-to-market.Eseentially, the integration of Mono strengthens Flutterwave’s vertical depth and its ability to create long-term value through improved profit margins, stronger customer retention, and differentiated infrastructure.Regulatory stakeholders will also benefit from the acquisition, as it promotes increased standardization, stronger data protection measures, and adherence to global security frameworks, including PCI-DSS and ISO 27001.However, Mono’s CEO, also commenting on the acquisition, highlighted the shared vision and the synergistic effect of the partnership, stating that Mono was built to unlock Africa’s Open Banking potential, and their joint work over the years had shown the power of a coordinated effort towards this goal.Mono’s capabilities in financial data access, direct bank payments, and identity verification, combined with Flutterwave’s extensive scale and global reach, are set to create a more comprehensive and defensible financial ecosystem.The investment aligns with the growing need for open and trustworthy infrastructure to support Africa’s digital economy and demonstrates a strategic shift towards interoperable, data-driven systems that are designed to facilitate long-term growth across the continent.