MONO BAGS $15M, Led By Tiger Global For Its Growth!

NIGERIA’S FINTECH STARTUP MONO BAGS $15M SERIES A ROUND BACKED BY TIGER GLOBAL

Emerging reports from a Nigeria-based startup that functions as an interface that helps to connect consumers’ bank accounts to financial apps just bagged millions in its latest funding round. The subject startup Mono bagged $15M Series A round per TechCrunch which was led by Tiger Global notably the Venture Capital firm’s third investment in the continent of Africa this year after Flutterwave and FairMoney.

In addition to existing investors, new investors include Lateral Capital, Acuity VC, Entrée Capital, GPIC, and not excluding Ingressive Capital, bringing the fintech’s total raise over a region of $17 million since its last year launch.

Meanwhile, looking at the population of Africa from a banking perspective, it’s evident the ratio of unbanked or underbanked has been a huge factor, hence the need to ship innovative products down the line for an open APIs will in doubt improve access to financial information and lower entry costs for the underbanked.

To this end, Mono has taken the bull by the horn, notably in the areas where Flutterwave and Paystack deployed the use of the debit card for web and mobile app, is rather seeing a different dimension which is viewed as the company’s edge which comes as two products according to CEO Abdulhamid Hassan. Firstly, DirectPay, a product designed in a way that allows Nigerian businesses to receive bank transfer payments for customers within their mobile app or via the web without needing their debit cards.

In addition to that is Statement Pages which also allows businesses to customers’ financial accounts without needing a developer, while the latter according to the CEO is the first of its kind in Africa. Yet, despite these achievements packed with unique features that are tailored to Africa’s most populous and economic country Nigeria, the startup is eager to expand into other markets like Kenya and Ghana.

Mono is also poised to expand to Egypt and South Africa, as part of its next year plans, which comes after the company delivered in Ghana, as it pilots with a few banks that include fintech like Oze and Tranzo. Equally, with regards to South African expansion, the company says it might complete such a move by partnering with Absa bank this year.

In the meantime, there are questions over its decision to expand to other markets which are thought as an outcome of pressure or competition, and for clarification, the CEO puts it that the company made such decision 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”. Notably, “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”. Hassan said.

Mono bagging $15M is a great achievement for its growth, while on the other hand, the company claimed it has processed more than 200 million financial data transactions from over businesses, fintech, and developers.  

Based on demands, it has doubled its headcount from the previous year and has about 30 staffers at the moment. With all these, the company said it has connected over 150,000 bank accounts in the last two months, which signifies 45x on every passing year.

Regarding Tiger Global involvement, the CEO made clear that the VC reached out to lead a new round and though the company didn’t plan to secure any additional capital this year, yet will the capital from Tiger Global help it grow faster, TechCrunch has learned.

“We feel the team at Tiger felt we were doing something amazing but though 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” Mono CEO Hassan said.

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