Bloc, Nigeria’s full-service FinTech and banking-as-a Service (BaaS) infrastructure provider, on Wednesday, announced its acquisition of Orchestrate, a payments orchestration company, to facilitate its payment system.
The strategic acquisition will enable Bloc to focus its core product strategy on delivering seamless BaaS & banking services while Orchestrate leads its FinTech Infrastructure with its proprietary payments orchestration Application Programming Interface (API).
Bloc’s 100 per cent acquisition of Orchestrate is a combined cash and equities deal with the revamped newcomer to the Bloc family remaining a standalone entity still led by CEO & founder, Jerry Enebeli.
Commenting on the acquisition, founder of Bloc, Edmund Olotu, , said: “we are proud of our input in helping shape the African fintech space and excited to welcome the Orchestrate team into the Bloc family. Part of our vision has always been to empower businesses of all sizes to offer seamless payment solutions to their customers, which is essential not just to the experience of the end user but also to the sector’s growth.
“Jerry and his team have built an incredible platform that is a great fit with what we were looking to add to our suite of services so it made sense to acquire their proven expertise rather than building our own platform from scratch. This is an exciting evolution for both businesses as we look to grow and build even more solutions that ultimately supports the growth of African tech businesses in the coming years.’’
Founder and CEO of Orchestrate, Jerry Enebeli, added, “We are thrilled to bring our technology and know-how to the already incredible Bloc team.”
our business growth goals aligned and that we could mutually benefit from combining our talent, resources and expertise to create a unique infrastructure that can power
African fintech. We’re looking forward to working together to close the fragmented gaps in cross-platform payments and powering many more businesses to scale their markets, whether in Africa or globally.”
Recent research has showed that fintechs in Africa accounted for roughly $3 billion, or two-thirds of all the funding obtained by startups throughout the continent last year.
This was also more than double the $1.35 billion in investments raised in 2020, and three times the amount raised in 2019. Bloc and Orchestrate want to simplify FinTech infrastructure for these businesses to enable faster, seamless service for their customers and ultimately empowering growth in the ecosystem.
