Nigeria-based Open Banking service provider Mono has released the Mono Telco data API to businesses in Nigeria. Secure access to user-permissioned financial data, as the core of Open Banking, allows businesses to offer individuals innovative financial services, giving them more value using these data and insights.

Over two million bank consumers have securely shared their financial transaction information successfully with businesses using Mono Connect in the last two years, the company says. Due to the nature of access to Open Banking, there still exists a barrier to entry for users who are not traditionally banked. In Nigeria, for instance, Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) data shows that 37 million adults are without an active bank account as of May 29, 2022 — representing 36.

8% of the adult population. This leaves innovators and their services out of reach for these segments of customers, according to Mono. In July 2022, Mono began trying to enable more businesses to extend their service offering to underbanked consumers by leveraging alternative data sources to drive financial inclusion, help businesses make data-informed decisions, and build new products by accessing customers' mobile network data across emerging economies.

With users’ consent, Mono’s customers can securely retrieve telco data to build inclusive products, offer more personalised experiences, and make more data-informed decisions for your business and users, as the company states. Why did Mono go for telco data? Mono believes that telcos are some of the world’s largest granular data aggregators, with a direct connection to millions of consumers. Today, Nigeria is one of Africa’s largest mobile markets, accounting for over 204.

2 million mobile subscribers and a mobile penetration rate of > 87% of the population. With the number of mobile subscribers across the networks expected to increase over the coming years, Telco data can open businesses to a new source of data to make informed decisions on consumer behaviour. In turn, more underbanked customers can access more relevant financial services.

Previous news about Mono In July 2022, the Nigeria-based fintech, which builds an Open Banking infrastructure that enables access to customer financial data and bank payments for digital businesses in Africa, expanded to Kenya as it begun its post-funding continent-wide rollout. In October 2021, Mono raised a USD 15 million Series A round led by Tiger Global. .