Abdulhamid Hassan’s fintech startup Mono raises $15-million Series-A round

Nigeria-based fintech startup Mono has raised a $15-million Series-A round, TechCrunch reported.

The startup helps African businesses access high-quality financial data and direct bank payments.

Since its launch last year, Mono has raised a total of $17.65 million. The startup was co-founded by CEO Abdulhamid Hassan and CTO Prakhar Singh.

The latest funding round was led by Tiger Global, with participation from new investors, such as General Catalyst and SBI Investment. New investors included Entree Capital, Lateral Capital, GPIC, Acuity VC and Ingressive Capital.

Commenting on the round, Hassan said direct pay and statement pages are the two products that distinguish Mono from its competitors.

While direct pay helps businesses collect bank transfer payments from customers within their Web or mobile app without using debit cards, statement pages allows businesses to access customer financial accounts without needing a developer.

At the moment, the products are tailored toward Nigerian users, as the company looks to enter the Ghanaian and Kenyan markets. It is also moving to launch in South Africa in the coming months.

Mono claims to have connected more than 150,000 bank accounts over the past two months with 45-percent year-on-year growth. It has also processed over 200 million financial data transactions from more than 270 businesses, developers and fintech partners.

“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,” Hassan said. “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.”