Fintech
Société Générale will sell its independent challenger bank Shine to Ageras
Four years after the acquisition Splendora French fintech startup offering bank accounts to freelancers and very small companies, Société Générale has announced plans to sell Shine to Ageras.
In 2020, TechCrunch reported that Société Générale spent around 100 million euros to acquire Shine. It wasn’t a huge acquisition, but it attracted quite a bit of coverage at the time as it was more than just a technology or talent deal. Société Générale is not a name that appears very frequently in tech startup acquisition news.
In short, the financial institution wanted to replicate BoursoBank’s success in online banking, but this time with freelance and corporate banking services. With today’s news, the French banking giant admits that it never really understood what to do with Shine.
As for Ageras, you may not be familiar with the company, but it has been a consolidator in the fintech and accounting industry for the past few years. The Danish company was founded in 2012 as an online marketplace that matches small businesses with accountants and bookkeepers.
More recently, the startup has repositioned its offering. It now wants to provide an all-in-one fintech platform for small businesses covering banking, accounting, tax filing, etc.
The company also relaunched $73 million in 2021 and another $88 million in April 2024 (82 million euros), which means it has a lot of liquidity for acquisitions. Acquired Ageras Billy AND Salary in Denmark, say that In the Netherlands, Zervanta pan-European billing product e Kontist, a German challenger bank for freelancers. It also developed Menetosan accounting product for freelancers that reminds me of Indy in France.
As you can see, Ageras is building a portfolio of companies offering adjacent products. In a way, Kontist, Tellow and now Shine offer more or less the same product. When you create an account, you receive an IBAN and a card. You can create invoices, receive money from your customers, get reminders when it’s time to pay taxes, and generate accounting exports.
This M&A strategy is a way to diversify the company’s presence in Europe as fintech still remains a fragmented market: there are some outliers that manage to successfully attract customers in multiple countries, but these are exceptions.
Shine currently has more than 100,000 customers while Ageras serves 300,000 customers in Denmark, France, Germany and the Netherlands. In 2023, Ageras reported revenues of €31.7 million ($34 million at today’s exchange rate).
Ageras and Société Générale have signed an exclusive acquisition agreement. While the terms of the deal remain undisclosed, Ageras says it expects to close the transaction at some point during the first half of 2025. Ageras plans to retain all of Shine’s employees and assets.