Flutterwave’s acquisition of Mono, Africa’s open banking infrastructure provider, signals the first major exit of Abdulhamid Hassan, its CEO.
Mono represents Hassan’s first multi-million-dollar exit; it is the fourth startup he has founded since entering Africa’s tech space in 2014.
For Hassan, the sale of Mono represents the culmination of years of startup building across multiple sectors, as his entrepreneurial journey began with Washify in 2014, an early attempt at an ‘Uber for laundromats’ that introduced him to Lagos’ emerging tech ecosystem.
In 2017, he founded Skylar Labs, an AI-driven customer support platform developed during his participation in the UAE-based Flat6Labs accelerator program.
In 2018, Hassan launched OyaPay, a QR-code-based mobile payments startup that gained notable market traction before shutting down due to internal investor disputes. Lessons from these earlier ventures would later inform the strategy and execution behind Mono, his most successful company to date, which has since been acquired by Flutterwave.
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For Flutterwave, the acquisition strengthens its position as a full-stack payments and financial infrastructure provider. At the same time, for Mono, it provides the scale and distribution needed to accelerate open banking adoption across Africa. Together, the companies aim to power the next phase of fintech innovation on the continent.
“We built Mono to unlock Africa’s open banking potential. Combining our data and identity capabilities with Flutterwave’s scale creates a more comprehensive infrastructure layer for the next generation of African fintech,” Hassan said in a statement.
The acquisition was done in a landmark all-stock transaction valued between $25 million and $40 million, which signals a major consolidation move within the continent’s fast-evolving fintech ecosystem.
The acquisition has also delivered strong returns for Mono’s early backers, with some investors reportedly achieving returns of up to 20 times their initial investment. The deal shows growing investor confidence in Africa’s fintech infrastructure layer, particularly companies building foundational tools rather than end-user financial products.
Founded in 2020, Mono has become a critical infrastructure layer for African fintechs, often described as the ‘Plaid of Africa’. The company provides APIs that enable businesses to access bank account data, initiate direct payments, and verify user identities.
Mono will continue to operate as an independent product entity within Flutterwave, as per the terms of the deal. Hassan will remain CEO and lead efforts to scale Mono’s open banking and data capabilities while supporting Flutterwave’s broader push into account-to-account payments, identity verification, and deeper financial infrastructure offerings.
