UAE’s Blockfinex acquires Nigerian crypto Fluidcoins
Fluidcoins, a Nigerian crypto payment startup has been 100% acquired by Blockfinex, also a crypto trading platform. The Nigerian startup was acquired for an undisclosed amount of money.
This was confirmed by Danny Oyekan, the founder and CEO of Blockfinex to Tech Cabal.
“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,” Oyekan said.
The acquisition of Fuidcoins includes all of its entities which include Flip and Fluidshops. Flip is a crypto wallet launched five months ago which allows users to earn interest on their stablecoins, buy airtime, top-up virtual calls, and send peer-to-peer social payments within the app.
Fluidshop, on the other hand, is a free online store created for entrepreneurs, freelancers, businesses and digital product owners. It helps them showcase their products and services, make sales and accept payments in cryptocurrency, especially stablecoins.
In a statement, Blockfinex stated that it will leverage this acquisition to launch a new product, BlockPay, which will be available in the UAE, US and Africa. It will also continue to facilitate payments for existing Fluidcoins clients like Accrue, The Peer, GetEquity and others.
By reason of this acquisition, Blockfinex will now use Fluidcoins Wallet-as-a-service product to reach over 600+ cryptocurrencies and also expand Fluidcoins checkout businesses to serve more businesses.
Fluidcoin was founded in 2021 by Lanre Adenowo and according to the description on their official site, the crypto platform said it was 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.”
According to the report by Tech Cabal, Fluidcoins found it difficult to raise follow-on funding to scale its offering. It had only raised about $150,000, to have kept it afloat for the last 18 months, Adenowo said.
Oyekan however assured that this is an acquihire deal and the team will stay intact. “There will be no management or staff changes.”
