Tech in Africa
Nigeria API fintech Mono showed lots of promise when it made it to Y Combinator’s W21 startup accelerator program. Founded in 2020, the Nigerian fintech raised a $500,000 pre-seed funding round from Ventures Platform, Ingressive Capital, and Rally Cap Ventures 9 months ago for its Plaid for Africa platform, in addition to receiving $125,000 from participation at the YC program 2 months prior.
Mono has now closed a $2 million seed investment from Entree Capital, Lateral Capital, among other investors. The new funds will reinforce Mono’s core platform and launch new products and features. The investment originates from local and global investors with a wealth of experience in global API infrastructure standards within the African regulatory ecosystem.
We're excited to announce that we have completed our Seed Round from Entrée Capital, Lateral Capital, and others 🎉.
In this update, our CEO, @ijbkid, shares what this round means for the company and our partners 💙.https://t.co/vSjzl2x1WB
— Mono (@mono_hq) May 24, 2021
Mono organizes financial data in a single API for firms and other third-party developers. This allows easy retrieval of information such as account statements, income, historical transactions, and real-time balance which looks to improve financial inclusion and connectivity across the continent.
Mono was founded by Prakhar Singh and Abdul Hassan in 2020 with the vision of creating an infrastructure for a new set of developers and businesses building apps offering secure and reliable access to financial information. The fintech startup platform has grown to partner with Autocheck, Carbon, Renmoney, Quickcheck, and several other developers.
Mono is part of an emerging API fintech club in Africa whose peers are Okra, a Nigeria fintech, and Stitch, a South Africa API fintech. The two latter companies have also raised seed investment this year, $3.5 million and $4 million.
Congrats to Nigeria's @mono_HQ on its $2.6m Seed Financing (led by @EntreeCap) to power the internet economy in #Africa https://t.co/kyohFGkHyh via @techcrunch #fintech #proudinvestor pic.twitter.com/ab01SMgVEA
— Entrée Capital (@EntreeCap) May 24, 2021
