Nigerian financial data startup Mono has raised a seed round of $2 million from a number of investors including Entrée Capital and Lateral Capital.
Babs Ogundeyi, co-founder and CEO of Kuda; Gbenga Oyebode, partner at The Continent Venture Partners; and Eric Idiahi, co-founder and partner at Verod Capital, also invested according to TechCrunch.
Mono was founded in 2020 by Abdul Hassan, a former product manager at Paystack, and Prakhar Singh. The company’s technology enables businesses and individuals to gain access to financial information, such as account statements, stored at commercial banks. Mono is one of out a number of startups creating open banking solutions in Nigeria.
The seed money adds to the $500,000 Mono raised in September 2020 and the $125,000 received as part of the Winter 21 cohort of Y Combinator. Mono was one of 10 African startups to pitch at YC’s Demo Day in March. Abdul Hassan, the startup’s CEO, told TechCabal at the time that YC was an opportunity to make strategic connections.
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.
One thing on his mind is “open data for telcos,” a framework that enables customers to easily move their data between mobile network providers.
Hassan could not be reached for comment at press time. On the surface, an open data for telcos plan rings close to and could be looking to build on the existing mobile number portability (MNP) service in Nigeria.
Launched by the Nigeria Communications Commission in April 2013, MNP enables customers to freely switch network providers while retaining their phone numbers. A consortium of three companies (Interconnect Limited, Saab Grinteck and Telecordia) currently acts as the Number Portability Clearing House (NPCH) for the industry.
Hassan also told TechCrunch that Mono will be going live in Ghana by June and that they already have five banks and MTN Ghana’s mobile money service as partners.
