Société Générale will sell its freelancer challenger bank Shine to Ageras, Four years after takeover To shinea French fintech startup offering bank accounts to freelancers and very small businesses, Société Générale has announced plans to sell Shine to Ageras.
In 2020, JS reported that Société Générale spent around €100 million to acquire Shine. It wasn’t a huge acquisition, but it attracted a lot of attention at the time because it was more than just a technology or talent deal. Société Générale is not a name that often appears in the news about the acquisition of tech startups.
In short, the financial institution wanted to replicate BoursoBank’s success in online banking, but this time with freelancer and business banking. With today’s news, the French banking giant admits it never really figured out what to do with Shine.
As for Ageras, you may not know the company, but it has been a consolidator in the fintech and accounting space in recent years. The Danish company was founded in 2012 as an online marketplace that connects small businesses with accountants and bookkeepers.
More recently, the startup has repositioned its offering. It now aims to provide an all-in-one fintech platform for small businesses that covers banking, accounting, tax filing, etc.
The company also raised an additional $73 million in 2021 $88 million by April 2024 (€82 million), which means it has a lot of money for acquisitions. Ageras acquired Billy And Salary in Denmark, Tellow in the Netherlands, Zervanta pan-European billing product and Kontist, a German challenger bank for freelancers. It has also evolved Menetoan 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 some ways, Kontist, Tellow and now Shine offer more or less the same product. When you create an account, you will receive an IBAN and a card. You can create invoices, receive money from your customers, receive reminders when it’s time to pay your taxes and generate accounting exports.
This M&A strategy is a way to diversify the company’s footprint 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 €31.7 million in revenues ($34 million at current exchange rates).
Ageras and Société Générale have signed an exclusive acquisition agreement. Although terms of the deal were not disclosed, Ageras said it expects to complete the transaction sometime in the first half of 2025. Ageras intends to retain all of Shine’s employees and operations.
