Nigerian API fintech startup, Mono, has closed $2 million in seed investment to charge the African Internet economy, after announcing its acceptance into Y Combinator’s Winter 2021 batch in February.
Recall that in September 2020, the startup raised $500k pre-seed with plans to build Plaid for Africa.
The $2 million round was raised by Kuda Co-founder and CEO, Babs Ogundeyi; Gbenga Oyebode, partner at TCVP; Eric Idiahi, Co-founder and Partner at Verod Capital, Lateral Capital; and Entrée Capital — an investor in Kuda’s seed round.
Mono organises different financial data in a single API for firms and third-party developers. It allows easy retrieval of information like income, account statements, real-time balance, and historical transactions. It also attempts to improve financial inclusion and connectivity in Africa.
The API startup claims to have secured partnerships with over 16 financial institutions in Nigeria. And so far, it has reportedly connected over 100,000 financial accounts for its partners and analysed over 66 million financial transactions.
The money raised would be used to strengthen its current financial and identity data offerings, and launch new products for diverse business verticals.
The funds would also be used for its expansion into Kenya and Ghana. As reported by TechCrunch, Mono will be launched in Ghana in June 2021.
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Abdul Hassan, said their expansion was inspired by their customers looking to expand to other markets. They work with their customers to give them the right tools to develop new experiences for their customers.
Data companies help businesses analyse acquired data and use them as required, and Abdul Hassan emphasised that Mono is focused on data and not open banking. Hence, Prakhar Singh, Mono Co-founder, expressed their intention to power the Internet economy with data unrelated to finances.
The CEO said that the fintech startup would ultimately diversify to become a data company. Therefore, it is taking things one product at a time.
Though the startup envisions becoming a data company, connecting with payment gateways and other fintech management startups, Hassan thinks though it comes with a lot of issues, connecting to the systems is possible.
Therefore, he believes that connecting to all available data and opening it up for businesses and developers is the first step to diversification.
–TECHCRUNCH
