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Bloc launches business banking service, appoints Guobadia to assemble its board

Nigerian fintech startup, Bloc has launched a business banking services. The startup has also announced that former presidential aide, Oswald Osaretin Guobadia will assist in assembling its board.

Bloc launches business banking service, appoints Guobadia to assemble its board
Bloc founder and CEO, Edmund Olotu and Oswald Osaretin Guobadia

After 18 months of enabling fintech startups to build and deploy banking and payment services, Nigerian fintech startup, Bloc has launched a business banking services.

"We call it Bloc 2.0B. With this, we solved the access problem for all types of businesses by fundamentally changing how banking and payments happen for all companies while enabling them to deploy bespoke financial services that guarantee business growth and sustainability," says Bloc founder and CEO, Edmund Olotu.

Before now, Bloc, with its CBN-issued Payments Solution Service Providers and Microfinance banking licences, specialised in providing proprietary and aggregated APIs that allow businesses to offer banking and financial services to their customers while also handling most of the regulatory and compliance requirements on their behalf.

Its stack of FinTech and Banking as a Service (F/BaaS) products and services empowers businesses to embed seamless digital financial services in their platform. Launched in 2021, Bloc has transitioned from offering solutions for utility payments to its current iteration as a full-service FaaS infrastructure provider.

"Bloc 2.0B takes a deeper dive into the problems businesses face with money-in and money-out," Olotu added.

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Last year, Bloc partnered with the Small & Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria to provide financial services — digital banking, bill payment, lending, loyalty cards management, social commerce, POS issuance, and so much more — for SMEs in the country. 

Aside from banking and payment services, a statement seen by Bendada.com disclosed that Bloc will offer unlimited sub-accounts and debit cards to manage your expenses and gain more oversight over your internal financial operations.

Bloc business bank dashboard 

It will also provide POS Terminals for agency banking and in-person payments via card or bank transfer, rebuilt templates and no-code tools that help businesses offer banking services (bank accounts and debit cards) to their own customers, staff, etc., global payouts connected to 50 currencies across the world; as well as developer features to allow technical teams to build custom applications with our arsenal of banking and payments products with the Bloc API.

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Bloc will continue to serve as an infrastructure company. Recall that last year, the Nigerian fintech startup acquired Orchestrate to power payment infrastructure in Africa.

Edmund Olotu also disclosed that Bloc has appointed Oswald Osaretin Guobadia to assemble its board of advisors and directors. Guobadia is the former senior special assistant on digital transformation to former Nigerian president, Muhammadu Buhari.

"He would help us identify, attract, and bring potential board members onboard," Olotu told Bendada.com. "This ensures that our quality of service is never compromised and that we place extra measures to protect our customer deposits outside the standard compliance, licensing, and deposit insurance policies."


Editor's Note:

  • We have corrected this article to reflect that Oswald Osaretin Guobadia was appointed to assemble Bloc's board of directors and advisors, not as board chair.
  • The headline has been corrected from "business bank" to "business banking services"

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