The foundation of financial technology is the ability to digitally send, hold, and receive money. Traditionally, customers got this service from banks via bank accounts. However, with the advent of technology, it became clear that this needed to be less traditional.
Technology meant it had to be easier and simpler to create. And that’s how we got virtual accounts.
Introducing Bloc Accounts
Bloc allows businesses to create and assign virtual accounts to their customers. This means that businesses can act as a bank for their customers providing an alternative way to send, receive and hold money digitally. For example, you may want your customers to be able to send/receive money on your app, or you want an online wallet to pay cashbacks and rewards into as a Supermarket, or you want to collect payments strictly via bank transfer.
All virtual accounts issued are duly compliant and NDIC-insured. Please note, Bloc is not a bank. We are a financial services infrastructure; all virtual accounts issued on our infrastructure are powered by our Microfinance bank, Banccorp Microfinance Bank Ltd.
Since launching in beta in 2022, more than 200 businesses have used us to create thousands of online wallets for their customers for a variety of use cases.
What Bloc Accounts can do for you
Send, receive and hold money. That’s what a good virtual account should do. At Bloc, we did all of this and more.
Let’s walk through what Bloc Accounts has in store for you:
1. Open a new bank account instantly
Bloc Accounts come inbuilt with a KYC module that allows you to collect and verify customers’ details before creating a virtual account for them. Businesses can create a new account number and assign them immediately to a customer.
These virtual accounts work exactly like normal bank accounts. The account details created is owned by Banccorp MFB, and you can send money to them from your most bank and FinTech apps, and you can withdraw from them.
2. Collect payments via bank transfer
Some businesses only want to collect payments from their customers. With Bloc, you can create collection accounts that are strictly for accepting payments via bank transfer from your customers. With a collection account, you can create a bank account for a type of payment. You can choose how many payments you want it to be valid for — one, two, ten, or unlimited — and you can create an unlimited number of collection accounts for your business.
For example, an NGO can create 3 collection accounts for three kinds of intiatives. Their audience can donate separately to these collection accounts, while the NGO receives all the money in one place.
3. Manage all accounts from one dashboard
Businesses can track every transaction performed by all the accounts created by them from their Dashboard. With Bloc, you can freeze or unfreeze an account if you identify suspicious activity; you can close an account and reopen it when you want; and you can see the full details of a transaction performed by the account.
With this, businesses can easily find and query a transaction in cases where it is pending or failed. They now get all the information they need to resolve any customer support issue that they may have.
4. Incredibly fast deposits and withdrawals
No one wants to lose their money when they attempt to send or receive funds.
Virtual accounts created with Bloc process credit and debit transactions at blazing fast speed. We own 100% of our infrastructure, and this means that when there are issues with settlements, we can resolve it faster than usual.
5. Customize account names with Alias
If you run a business that wants to connect multiple bank accounts to the same customer but needs a way to tell them apart, Bloc allows you to be able to add a custom nickname or suffix at the end of the account holder name.
For example, if a business wants to create a new account number for a customer named “Joshua Abiodun”, they can create an alias called “card” and the resulting account name will be “Joshua Abiodun - card”. This means the customer now has two virtual accounts with the names “Joshua Abiodun” and “Joshua Abiodun - card” respectively.
6. Assign virtual NGN/USD cards
As a part of the Bloc ecosystem, you get instant access to our Cards product and you can sync it with the accounts that you have created. When you create a new card for a customer, you can choose to link with any of the accounts that you have created for the customer all from the Dashboard or via the API.
What you can do with Bloc Accounts
Let’s see a few examples of what you can do with Bloc Accounts, regardless of if you are a FinTech or non-FinTech company.
1. Create online wallets
Instead of building a wallet management system, you can use Bloc to create virtual accounts for your customers and let it function as a wallet. Bank account numbers are instantly created and assigned; so, your customers can use it to send/receive money, and you’ll never have to worry about building a payment stack for funding your wallets.
Here’s what you can do with online wallets:
- You can create loyalty programs that keep customers coming back to your business. You can instantly create accounts for your customers that you pay their cashback percentage or rewards into whenever they buy from you. Once accumulated, customers can then easily use the funds in their account to buy from you.
- Assuming you have a wallet built into your product and you simply want a way to help your customers fund their wallet, you can use Bloc to create a collection account and assign it to a wallet. So all payments made to that collection account funds a particular wallet, but all the funds are settled in one place (instead of in individual accounts).
- As an NGO, if you’re receiving donations online, you can create dedicated collection accounts for different kinds of intiatives and programs that you may have. All funds received will be settled in one place, but your customers will not be confused about what they’re paying for.
2. Create accounts for kids & teens
Say you’re a company that offers financial services to children, you cannot directly open a virtual account for them because they are under 18.
With Bloc, you can create an account for their parent/guardian, and then use Alias to create multiple unique accounts that are still connected to their parent/guardian’s customer profile. For example, if Nnenna Okafor has 3 kids, with Alias, you can create accounts for her kids with account holder names like: “Nnenna Okafor - kid 1”, “Nnenna Okafor - kid 2”, “Nnenna Okafor - kid 3”.
3. Build an escrow platform
Businesses can build fully-customizable flows on top of our infrastructure to control how money is sent and received between their customers. For example, a business can decide that the money sent should be inaccessible to the recipient until the terms of a deal is complete; they can also decide that the money sent shouldn’t be delivered until the sender confirms receipt of a good or service.
Getting started with Bloc Accounts
To get started, the first thing you have to do is go to our website and sign up to create a new account, or just go here → app.blochq.io.
For most businesses, everything they need is available on the Dashboard. If you need a detailed guide on getting started, read this help article: Getting Started with Accounts. However, if you want to embed Accounts into your app, you can use our API Documentation to build your unique use case or product.
We currently only allow businesses to create Naira accounts for individuals. In the coming months, we’ll be releasing NGN business accounts, USD accounts for individuals, and so much more.
Pricing
There are two types of accounts — fixed accounts and collection accounts. Fixed accounts work like normal bank accounts, while collection accounts are used to strictly collect payments via bank transfer.
Frequently asked questions
What country are you available in?
Bloc Accounts is only available to verified businesses in Nigeria. We only issue Naira bank accounts at the moment, with USD accounts coming soon.
I don’t have a developer team. Can I use Bloc Accounts?
Yes, you can! All you have to do to sign up on Bloc, verify your business, create a customer, provide their KYC details and create/assign a virtual account to them — all on the Dashboard!
Why do I have to do KYC?
KYC is an important aspect of issuing a virtual account and it is required by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). This is a non-negotiable, you cannot create an account for a customer without providing their KYC details for verification.
How much does it cost to create an account?
It is completely free to create a new account. To learn more about other associated fees, please visit our Pricing page.
How can I contact you?
You can join our Slack community and drop your questions in the channels, or send us an email to help@blochq.io
What’s next
Accounts form a fraction of what we are building at Bloc. Our dream is to give businesses all of the tools and technology that they need to access and distribute financial services to their customers.
If you only want to give customers a personalized way to send/receive money, then you can simply use Bloc. But if you want to do more than that, Bloc still remains your best choice to get all you need in one place — funds transfer, card issuance, POS terminals, online payments, etc.
We are excited to see what you build with Bloc.
Get started with Bloc Accounts here.