Blockfinex, a cryptocurrency exchange company with Barbados and Seychelles registrations, recently paid an undisclosed sum for a 100% stake in Fluidcoins, a startup providing a cryptocurrency payment gateway in Nigeria. This is an acquihire because Fluidcoins’ founding team will continue to develop the product. The CEO and founder of Blockfinex, Danny Oyekan, confirmed the acquisition news that was first reported by TechCabal. The transaction was made possible by Dan Holdings Limited, the parent organization of Blockfinex and a web3 ecosystem and venture fund.
This acquisition was motivated by a decision to scale the wallet as a service and cryptocurrency payment processing businesses globally, according to Oyekan. All Fluidcoins businesses, including Flip and Fluidshops, are included in the acquisition. The Flip by Fluidcoins cryptocurrency wallet, which was released about five months ago, enables users to send peer-to-peer social payments, buy airtime, top-up virtual calls, and earn interest on their stablecoin investments. In contrast, Fluidshop is a free online store designed for business owners, freelancers, entrepreneurs, and owners of digital products. They can advertise their goods and services, generate revenue, and accept payments in cryptocurrencies, especially stablecoins.
Blockfinex also stated that it would use this acquisition as a springboard to introduce BlockPay, a new service that would be offered in the US, Africa, and the UAE. BlockPay will offer API Wallet-as-a-Service and act as a payment processor. Additionally, it will keep facilitating payments for Fluidcoins’ current customers, including Accrue, The Peer, and GetEquity, among others.
In order to support more than 600 cryptocurrencies, Blockfinex will now use Fluidcoins’ Wallet-as-a-Service product. Fluidcoins Checkout will also be expanded to support more businesses globally.
By “providing them with the tools to participate in the DeFi economy, accept online and offline stable-coin payments, and accept international payments,” Fluidcoins, a 2021 startup founded by Lanre Adenowo, claims to be creating a crypto economy for African businesses. The CEO and CTO of the business are Adenowo.
Utility is one of the biggest barriers to cryptocurrency adoption, and how it can be incorporated into practical applications is a recurrent issue. As a response, Fluidcoins has made crypto payments as simple as fiat payments on the payment side. For instance, Paystack for cryptocurrency is Fluidcoins. This, in Oyekan’s opinion, is a key selling point for the company. “As we move to the crypto utility phase, facilitating traditional businesses and consumers alike to make payments for real world services with crypto is going to be a game changer for the crypto industry over the long term.”
After Flutterwave’s acquisition of Disha the previous year, this deal is the first acquisition reported for Nigeria in 2023. The deal is the first in the nation’s crypto ecosystem, which is most significant.
Many crypto believers entered the VC space as a result of the 2021 cryptocurrency bull run. Even some of the largest VCs have raised money specifically for web3 and cryptocurrency. Due to the surge in investor interest, startups developing in the web3 or cryptocurrency sectors have collectively raised hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital. But a 2022 bear run shattered enthusiasts’ confidence; investors reexamined their interest in cryptocurrencies; startups started to find it difficult to raise money; and users started looking elsewhere for the next big thing. An already nascent interest in the sector suffered even more harm as a result of the recent FTX collapse.
Like many businesses in the market today, Fluidcoins had trouble securing additional funding to expand its offering. Adenowo claimed that Fluidcoins had only raised about $150,000, which had sustained it for the previous 18 months. Despite agreeing that it’s the logical next step to keep the lights on as the company is running out of cash, he chose not to comment on this acquisition.