SMEDAN signs MOU with banking service, FinTech infrastructure company

The Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Bloc, a banking services and FinTech infrastructure company, to provide a platform that brings the benefits of financial technology (FinTech) to SMEs in Nigeria.

A statement by the Corporate Affairs Division of the agency, signed by the Head of Corporate Affairs, Ibrahim Kaula Mohammed, said: “Bloc, being a FinTech infrastructure company with a PSSP license from the Central Bank of Nigeria, is well positioned to meet the partnership’s commitments .”

According to the statement, SMEDAN, in collaboration with Bloc, designed an automated referral platform that allows SMEs to quickly access services beneficial to their business model from FinTech companies operating in Nigeria and connected to the Bloc infrastructure.

Some of the system’s benefits include giving SMEs direct access to digital financial tools, social commerce platforms, lending services, digital banking and industry-specific supply chain solutions.

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During the signing ceremony, which took place recently at the headquarters of the agency in Abuja, the Director General and Chief Executive Officer of SMEDAN, Mr Wale Fasanya, said that in its commitment to promote the progress of SMEs in Nigeria with several interventions, the agency believes that FinTech can help in this mission by diversifying and expanding their marketing and sales from pure digital channels to SMEDAN’s verified database of various SMEs operating across multiple sectors and geographies in Nigeria.

He said: “We know that this partnership with Bloc and the subsequent platforms being developed will benefit the SMEs working with us by improving access to specialized services developed by the innovative fintech sector in Nigeria.”

The SMEDAN CEO further stated that “We have over 4,000,000 registered FinTechs and we are always thinking of ways to 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.”

In his remarks at the ceremony, the Business Development Officer of Bloc, Mr Kingsley Ikart, said that as an infrastructure company providing services to other FinTechs, he believes that the platform designed by both SMEDAN and his company will allow some of these FinTechs to extend their brilliant services to small and medium-sized enterprises that would otherwise not have been aware of what they are doing.

Ikart noted that the partnership between his company and SMEDAN was a win-win because these SMEs can now benefit from such innovations without overstretching themselves and compromising the time they need to spend nurturing their businesses.