Mono, a Nigerian API fintech startup, has raised a $2M seed round of funding from Entrée Capital (Investors in Kuda), Lateral Capital (an existing investor), Gbenga Oyebode, partner at TCVP fund, Babalola Ogundeyi (CEO of Kuda Bank), and Eric Idiahi, co-founder and partner at Verod Capital among other angel investors.
The investment comes 9 months after the startup raised $500,000 in pre-seed last September and two months after receiving $125,000 from Y Combinator. Mono’s total investment now stands at $2.625 million.
Launched in August 2020 by Abdulhamid Hassan and Prakhar Singh, Mono is the infrastructure that powers the new set of businesses and developers building apps that require secure and reliable access to financial accounts in Africa.
Initially, when the app was announced according to the founders, “The developer community started reaching out to use the infrastructure that powers the app. That’s when we decided to focus on building out the infrastructure instead of the app.”
Mono will use the new capital to strengthen its core platform (Mono Connect) and launch new products and features to ensure that it is the most powerful — and reliable — way for businesses and developers to access financial accounts in Africa.
Also, some of the new money will go towards funding its expansion to Ghana next month. The API startup already has a handful of existing customers from Nigeria and new ones in Ghana. Some of these partners include five banks (GTBank, Fidelity Bank, and three unannounced banks) and the mobile money service arm of MTN Ghana.
In Nigeria, Mono has already secured partnerships with more than 16 financial institutions in Nigeria. In addition to having a little over a hundred businesses like Carbon, Aella Credit, Credpal, Renmoney, Autochek, and Inflow Finance access customers bank account for bank statements, identity data, and balances, Mono has also connected over 100,000 financial accounts for its partners and analysed over 66 million financial transactions so far.
But beyond making connections, Mono appears to be expanding its focus beyond financial data. “We’re thinking of how we can power the internet economy with data that isn’t necessarily financial data,” Hassan said.
Commenting, Avil Eyal, managing partner and co-founder of Entrée Capital said: “We are very excited to be working with Abdul, Prakhar and the entire Mono team as they continue to build out the rails for African banking to enable the delivery of financial services to hundreds of millions of people across the African continent.”
