Getting Started with Business Bank Accounts

As a full-service business bank, one of the most important features you enjoy on our platform is a free bank account in your business name. To get a free business bank account, you need to sign up and verify your business on Bloc.

To learn how to sign up on Bloc as a registered or unregistered business, read this article.

In this article, we'll talk about business bank accounts on Bloc and how to navigate it.

Introduction to Business Accounts

Being a bank means we are regulated by the Central Bank. To this end, we request your BVN when you sign up for our business banking services so that we can verify your identity. We use your details only for identity verification purposes, and we do not share them with anybody.

Our banking services are powered by three banking institutions, Providus bank, Zenith bank and Bloc Microfinance Bank, all fully licensed and approved by the CBN, and all of our bank accounts (local and global) are deposit-insured.

So your bank account will look like this:

2032818982 (Bloc Microfinance Bank) - Payflow Limited

Businesses can create two types of accounts with Bloc, depending on what you want to use it for.

1. A Main business bank account
2. Sub-accounts

Main Business Bank Account

When you sign up to use Bloc and complete your business verification, you are immediately issued a business bank account in your business name. This is a fixed bank account for your banking transactions and can be used to hold, send and receive money across banks in Nigeria for your business.

When you accept payments via bank transfers, payment links or POS Terminals, we settle your payments into your main account daily.

Learn how to accept payments with Bloc

When you log in to your account and navigate to the home page, you will be able to -

1. View your new bank account details
2. View your main account balance
3. Send money into and out of the account.

How to view your business bank account details

To view your new business bank account,

1. Navigate to the home page.

2. Tap on view account details underneath the account balance tab and you will be able to view the details of your new business bank account details.

Please note that the account name will be the business name you signed up with on Bloc.

What's the maximum amount of money that can be transacted on my main account?

Starter businesses have an all-time transaction limit of 2,000,000 NGN, while Registered businesses have no account limits.

How many main accounts can I create?

You can only own one main account; however, if you wish to create other bank accounts for your other business needs, you can use the sub-accounts feature to create the other accounts you need. To learn about how we handle.

Sub-Accounts

With sub-accounts on the Bloc Dashboard, you can create separate bank accounts for different parts of your business, such as employees, departments, and business expenses.

You can create as many sub-accounts as you need, name them accordingly, transfer in and out of these accounts and link them to a Bloc virtual card. You can also access additional functionalities, such as freezing or closing a sub-account if you suspect it's been used for fraudulent activities.

To learn how to create sub-accounts for your business, read this article.

Create a sub-account

The most basic thing you can use Bloc for is to create and assign virtual account numbers to your customers. These accounts work exactly like normal bank accounts. Your customers can hold, send and receive money with them.

Here is more information for you to further understand how business bank accounts work:

• How to verify your business on Bloc
• How to switch between starter and registered businesses

What currencies do we support for business banking?

Business Accounts on Bloc are only available in Nigeria and support opening NGN bank accounts. However, USD bank accounts will soon be available to help you accept payments from anywhere in the world.

How much does it cost to create an account?

Business bank account creation is free.

How fast and reliable are transactions on Bloc?

Credit and debit transactions are typically completed in less than 2 minutes. This is possible because of our direct integration with NIBSS, the switching provider responsible for instant inter-bank transfers.

What fees accompany this type of account?

Here's an overview of what you could pay for and how much we charge:

We do not charge you any fee for receiving deposits into your account. However, for transfers out, read this article to learn more: Sending Money with Bloc.

Why do we freeze accounts?

We have Compliance and Anti Money Laundering policies in line with the CBN regulations for holding a banking licence. We run an internal system for spotting anomalies and suspicious activity on every account created on our infrastructure.

If any of the accounts created on our infrastructure breaks these policies, we reserve the right to freeze their accounts. A frozen account will no longer be able to perform any transaction as long as it remains frozen. However, their balance will still remain available to them.

We typically reach out to businesses whose accounts have been frozen to investigate and verify that all is well. If all is well, the business can go ahead to unfreeze the account.