Nigerian Startups Welcome First Acquisition in 2023 as Dubai-Based Blockfinex "Acquihires" Fluidcoins
Fluidcoins, a Nigerian crypto payment gateway startup, has been acquired for an undisclosed sum by Blockfinex, a Dubai-based, Barbados- and Seychelles-registered crypto exchange company. Meanwhile, the Fluidcoins founding team will continue to work on the product, making this an “acquihire.” According to TechCabal, and confirmed by Danny Oyekan, the founder and CEO of Blockfinex. Dan Holdings Limited, the parent company of Blockfinex and a web3 ecosystem and venture fund, facilitated the transaction.
Founded by Lanre Adenowo in 2021, Fluidcoins prides itself in building a crypto economy for African businesses by “providing them with the tools to participate in the DeFi economy, accept online and offline stable-coin payments, international payments.
“This acquisition was driven by a decision to venture into Wallet as a service business and crypto payment processing and scale it across the world,” said the CEO in an interview with TechCabal. All Fluidcoins entities, including Flip and Fluidshops, have been acquired. Flip by Fluidcoins, a crypto wallet that debuted about five months ago, allows users to earn interest on their stablecoins, purchase airtime, top-up virtual calls, and send peer-to-peer social payments directly from the app. Fluidshop, on the other hand, is a free online store designed for entrepreneurs, freelancers, small businesses, and owners of digital products. It enables them to showcase their products and services, make sales, and accept cryptocurrency payments, particularly stablecoins.
What you should know about Blockfinex’s Acquisition of Fluidcoins
In the same vein, Blockfinex stated in a statement that it would use this acquisition to launch a new product, BlockPay, which will be available in the UAE, the United States, and Africa. BlockPay will be a payment processor as well as a provider of API wallet-as-a-service. It will also continue to facilitate payments for Fluidcoins’ existing clients, including Accrue, The Peer, and GetEquity.
Fluidcoins Wallet-as-a-Service products will now be used by Blockfinex to reach over 600+ Cryptocurrencies, and Fluidcoins Checkout businesses will be expanded to serve more businesses across the globe.
This happened to be Nigeria’s first reported acquisition deal for 2023 and the first since Flutterwave acquired Disha last year. It is also the first exit in the country’s crypto ecosystem. It is also worth noting that this comes at the tail end of the crypto market bull run, having spent the better part of 2022 in a very uncomfortable place, casting doubt on the token’s future in emerging markets. This situation made it difficult for Fluidcoins, a startup in the vertical, to raise follow-on funding to scale its offering. Fluidcoins had only raised approximately $150,000, which had kept it afloat for the previous 18 months.