Nigerian Open Banking Startup Mono Secures $15M In Series A Funding Round Led by Tiger Global

Mono, a Nigeria-based financial data startup, on Monday said it has raised a $15 million in Series A funding round led by Tiger Global. The venture capital firm which had previously invested in Flutterwave and FairMoney this year.

Existing investors Entree Capital, Lateral Capital, GPIC, Acuity VC, and Ingressive Capital also participated in the round, joined by new ones, including Target Global, General Catalyst, and SBI Investment.

Founded in 2020 by Abdul Hassan, a former product manager at Paystack, and Prakhar Singh, Mono is one of several startups – including OnePipe and Okra – that have created open banking solutions in Nigeria. Its technology enables businesses and individuals to gain access to financial information stored at commercial banks.

“A year ago, we launched Mono and we’ve grown rapidly since,” the company said in a statement made available to TechCabal. “Our vision to power businesses with access to financial data and direct bank payments has progressed with a lot of learning.”

The Series A investment is the latest in a list of successive fundraises by Mono and brings the startup’s total raised to over $17 million.

In May, it secured a $2 million seed investment from a number of investors, including Entrée Capital, Lateral Capital, and Babs Ogundeyi, co-founder and CEO of Kuda.

Both investment rounds add to the $500,000 Mono raised in September 2020 and the $125,000 received as part of the Winter 21 cohort of Y Combinator.

Last week, Hassan confirmed Mono’s expansion to Ghana and affirmed that it’s currently in private beta with fintech Oze and Tranzo in the West African country as well as other financial institutions, including Guaranty Trust Bank, Ecobank, Fidelity Bank Ghana, Stanbic, Paystack, Flutterwave, and Standard Chartered.

That means Ghanaian businesses can now link the companies with their apps to fetch transactions, statements, balance, income, and identity data.

The launch in Ghana is part of Mono’s broader expansion plan to make its open banking solution available across sub-Saharan Africa.

Mono plans to go after other markets like Kenya, Egypt, and South Africa, all of which the startup aims to establish a presence in by next year.

Hassan said that Mono might complete the move to South Africa through a partnership with Absa bank this year.

when questioned whether investor pressure or competition was fuelling the need for Mono to expand quickly, Hassan reckoned that the company made such decisions solely because of its customers.

“Everything that we do at Mono is mostly customer-driven. Customers who want to launch lending or fintech apps in these countries say they can’t do so unless Mono is there,” he said. “Based on how we’ve built our relationship and the kind of products we’ve built in Nigeria, people rely on us and say when we go to a country, they would also want to launch there.”

There’s also a vertical expansion play for the company as it looks to offer enterprise solutions to FMCGs, law firms — non-tech and traditional industries with the capability to command more transaction volume.

In terms of numbers, Mono claims to have processed over 200 million financial data transactions from over 270 businesses, developers, and fintechs as well as connected over 150,000 bank accounts in the last two months.

The company also said it has connected over 150,000 bank accounts in the last two months and is growing 45x year-on-year in that regard. With around 30 staffers today, Mono doubled its headcount from the previous year, according to its CEO.