The Orchestrate team.

Bloc, Nigeria’s FinTech and Banking-as-a-Service infrastructure provider, has acquired payments orchestration firm Orchestrate, formerly the wallets-as-a-service provider Getwallets.

According to a statement, the acquisition will enable Bloc to focus on delivering seamless BaaS & banking services, while Orchestrate leads its FinTech Infrastructure with its proprietary payments orchestration API.

Bloc’s 100% acquisition of Getwallets 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.

Bloc, with its CBN-issued PSSP & Microfinance banking licenses, specialises 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.

In a statement, Block explained that its stack of F/BaaS products and services empowers businesses to embed seamless digital financial services in their platform.

“Since 2021, Bloc has transitioned from offering solutions for utility payments to its current iteration as a full-service FaaS infrastructure provider. Bloc has processed more than $30M in the past year through its bill payments API alone. The company also recently launched its SuperAgency tool which allows licensed companies to offer agency banking services,” the statement reads.

Getwallets was founded in 2021 by Jerry Enebeli and Yewande Odumosu to offer an integrated payment and wallet framework allowing payment providers a more unified structure for their customers.

“Its pivot to a broader payments infrastructure company means, as Orchestrate, it can provide businesses instant access to multiple payment methods and providers globally through a single integration (currently available in Nigeria, Ghana, Egypt, South Africa & the USA, with plans to extend support to more foreign payment providers and currencies in the near future),” the companies explained.

Bloc’s acquisition of Orchestrate boosts the group’s capacity to offer FinTech infrastructure such as online payments, subscription management, BNPL payment infrastructure, virtual wallets, bill payments, invoicing, etc, in its FinTech-as-a-Service suite of APIs.

Commenting on the acquisition, Edmund Olotu, founder of Bloc, 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.”

Enebeli added, “We are thrilled to bring our technology and know-how to the already incredible Bloc team. It was clear that 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.”

New research shows Fintechs in Africa accounted for roughly US$3-billion, or two-thirds of all the funding obtained by start-ups throughout the continent last year.

“This was also more than double the US$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,” the companies stated.