One year after its launch, Nigeria's API fintech, Mono, has amassed a little over $17.5 million in funding, thanks to a $15 million Series A round which took the company's valuation to over $100 million.
The Series A round was led by Tiger Global and featured new investors like Target Global, General Catalyst, and SBI Investment. The new investors were joined by existing ones, including Entree Capital, Lateral Capital, Golden Palm Investments, Acuity VC, and Ingressive Capital.
According to Hassan, the VC firm reached out to lead a new round, and though Mono didn't plan to raise any additional capital this year, the capital from Tiger Global would help it grow faster.
“We feel the team at Tiger felt we were doing something amazing but thought what we had raised wouldn’t help us build a big company. And they were like, ‘we want to help you build a big company,” said Hassan.
The fact that Tiger Global contacted Mono for the Series A round suggests that the VC is very bullish on the tech startup. This could be as a result of;
- Mono's impressive numbers - The startup claims to have processed over 200 million financial data transactions from over 270 businesses, developers, and fintechs. 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.
- Tiger sees a Paystack in Mono. There is the possibility of an acquisition by an established player in the open banking space, just like Stripe acquired Paystack.
Competition in this space is heating up nicely, with the likes of Okra, Plaid, Stitch, and OnePipe also streamlining various financial data in single APIs per TechCrunch.
Mono plans to outsmart the market with its newly launched products, DirectPay and Statement Pages. Hassan calls the latter the first of its kind in Africa. It gives businesses access to customers' financial accounts without needing a developer.
DirectPay, on the other hand, enables Nigerian businesses to collect bank transfer payments from customers within their web or mobile app without using their debit cards.
Mono will be looking to expand into other countries following its new war chest. The plan has been set in motion even before the Series A round, with the CEO confirming plans to expand into Kenya and Ghana. This plan has been achieved already with Mono piloting with a few banks and fintechs in Ghana.
Mono plans to be present in five African countries by the end of next year, including Egypt and South Africa.