The Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN), says its partnership with Bloc would provide the needed financial technology to grow businesses in Nigeria.
The Director-General of SMEDAN, Mr Olawale Fasanya said this in a statement issued on Monday in Abuja by the agency’s Head of Corporate Affairs Division, Mr Ibrahim Mohammed.
Fasanya said that the partnership with Bloc would be providing tools and software for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to manage their financial operations more efficiently.
SMEDAN in Nov. 2022, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Bloc, a banking service and FinTech infrastructure company.
Fasanya said that the platform was impacting positively on how SMEs serve their customers with financial technology.
According to Fasanya, prevalent challenge for businesses in Nigeria has been poor infrastructure to manage business operations and access financial services.
“And this is one of the challenges this strategic partnership with Bloc aims to solve,’’ Fasanya said.
He said the partnership was aimed at promoting the growth of SMEs by providing them with easy access to FinTech tools and infrastructure in alignment with SMEDAN’s responsibilities as a government agency.
“If Micro, Small and Medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) do well, they can contribute significantly to employment generation, wealth creation, poverty reduction, and sustainable economic growth and development in Nigeria.
Explaining the role of Bloc in the partnership, Fasanya said it was a financial services infrastructure company that provided access to an array of easy-to-use tools and software for SMEs with little or zero technical know-how.
According to him, beyond what Bloc offers is their expertise in managing their financial operations seen recently with the inauguration of their new Dashboard and the wide range of FinTech products available on their infrastructure.
“Small and Medium Enterprises will also have access to sign up to a directory of FinTech startups powered by the Bloc infrastructure for more niche services such as invoicing, inventory management, and human resources, among others,’’ he said.
Fasanya said that the SMEDAN x Bloc platform was currently in development and would be ready for release by May/June 2023 to the first set of businesses signed up on the wait list.
“Having served about 70 businesses in Nigeria with the private beta version of the Bloc Dashboard, this partnership with SMEDAN brings the much improved and innovative product to a much larger audience of businesses in Nigeria.
“Through, this partnership with Bloc, SMEs in the SMEDAN directory would have access to the Bloc Dashboard and their directory of third-party financial products and services.
“This will enable them to directly manage financial and payment operations for themselves and their customers within and outside the country via the portal.
“As an add-on to this partnership, SMEs will be able to efficiently execute their business model and drive innovation within their business sector.
“This goes further to benefit both the SMEs and the startups on Bloc while driving economic growth for the country.
“Overall, this partnership is focused on delivering measurable results for these businesses, opening up new opportunities for them and ensuring they have access to the best tools to make growth possible,’’ Fasanya said.
