Block acquires musician-focused fintech start-up Hifi
Block, the San Francisco-based payment solutions specialist formerly known as Square, has acquired musician-focused fintech start-up Hifi for an undisclosed sum.
Block acquires financial rights fintech Hifi
Brooklyn-based Hifi was launched in 2020 by its founder and CEO Damian Manning to provide music artists with a transparent overview of their royalty earnings. The company’s Cash Flow product is described by Manning as “a royalty acceleration service that pays artists and rights holders in real time”, essentially enabling musicians to get paid a salary bi-weekly.
Through a statement on its website, the fintech says the acquisition by Block will “further our shared purpose of economic empowerment with the financial technologies and services we have built to help artists thrive”.
For Block, the deal is expected to complement its existing position at the intersection of fintech and the music industry. It previously acquired music streaming service Tidal, which was founded by American music artist Jay Z, in March 2021 to the tune of $297 million. The stock and cash deal connected the platform’s artist community to Block’s financial services suite as a means to enable them to better manage their finances and collect outstanding revenues.
Alongside Tidal and now Hifi, the fintech also owns a catalogue of other payments-focused businesses, including the mobile payment service Cash App, the buy now, pay later (BNPL) platform Afterpay and the open source toolkit TBD, among others.
