By Ikenna Uwadileke
The Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN), has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Bloc to provide benefits of financial technology to SMEs.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Bloc is a banking service and FinTech infrastructure company.
A statement issued on Friday in Abuja by Mr Ibrahim Mohammed, Head Corporate Affairs Division of SMEDAN, said Bloc was well positioned to meet the obligations of the partnership.
According to Mohammed, SMEDAN in conjunction with Bloc designed an automated referral platform.
Mohammed said that the platform allows Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to rapidly access services that were beneficial to their business model from FinTech companies operating in Nigeria and connected to the Bloc infrastructure.
“Some of the system’s benefits include providing SMEs with direct access to digital financial tools, social commerce platforms, lending services, digital banking services, and industry-specific supply chain solutions.
He quoted the Director-General and Chief Executive Officer of SMEDAN, Mr Wale Fasanya as expressing the agency’s commitment to boost the progress of SMEs in Nigeria with multiple interventions.
“We know this partnership with Bloc and the subsequent platforms that are being developed will benefit the SMEs that work with us by improving access to specialised services developed by the innovative Fin Tech sector of Nigeria.
“We have more than 4,000,000 registered FinTechs and we are always thinking of ways by which we can improve their existence.
“Our success is measured by how much we can do for them, and we believe we have shown our own level of innovation by developing this platform with Bloc,’’ Fasanya said.
In his remarks at the ceremony, Bloc’s Business Development Officer, Mr Kingsley Ikart, said that the platform would allow some of the FinTechs to extend their brilliant services to SMEs.
“As an infrastructure company that provides services to other FinTechs, we believe that this platform designed by SMEDAN and Bloc would allow some of these FinTechs to extend their brilliant services to SMEs that would otherwise not have been aware of what they do,’’ Ikart.
He further described the partnership between Bloc and SMEDAN as a win-win situation.
“This is because these SMEs can now benefit from such innovations without stressing themselves and compromising the time they need to attend to their businesses,’’ Ikart said.
