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Mono, an Application Programme Interface (API) that helps companies and third-party developers to access their customers’ financial accounts in Nigeria announced that it had been accepted into Y Combinators Winter 2021 batch. Mono has joined 39 other African startups that are already in the accelerator’s portfolio.

Founded in 2020 by Prakhar Singh and ex-Paystack employee Abdul Hassan, Mono helps businesses in Africa access their customers’ financial accounts for data and payments. This sort of interface is super useful if you’re a digital lender looking to use a user’s bank statement to determine their capacity to take loans.

API fintech startups are becoming such a big deal. Since Visa acquired Plaid, another API company, investors have been on the lookout for new API startups. That is why okra, one-pipe, and Mono have been able to raise funding faster than others.

API makes everything seamless. API startups get data from different sources and aggregate it into a database where businesses can get access to them with their users’ consent. This data can be used to solve various problems.

According to TechCrunch, Mono has partnerships with more than 16 financial institutions in Nigeria and has a little over a hundred businesses like Carbon, Renmoney, Flutterwave, and Indicina using its platform. They process about 5 million data sets per hour,

The company is also planning an imminent pan-African expansion to Ghana and Kenya and subsequently become a global company.

What this means: Being Admitted into Y Combinator’s Winter 2021 batch is a big deal as the six-month-old startup will receive $125,000 in seed funding with the possibility of follow up funding in March.

What you should know: In September 2020, Mono raised a $500,000 pre-investment round from early-stage investors like Lateral Capital, Ventures Platform, Golden Palm Investments, and Rally Cap.