Four years after the takeover ShineFrench fintech startup offering bank accounts to freelancers and very small businesses, Société Générale announced plans to sell Shine Eternity.
In 2020, TechCrunch reported that Société Générale spent roughly €100 million to acquire Shine. It wasn’t a huge acquisition, but it had a lot of interest at the time because it was greater than just a technology or talent deal. Société Générale is not a name that appears fairly often in tech startup acquisition news.
In short, the financial institution wanted to repeat BoursoBank’s success in online banking – but this time with freelance banking and business banking. In today’s news, the French banking giant admits it never really knew what to do with Shine.
As for Ageras, chances are you’ll not be familiar with the company, but it has been a consolidator in the fintech and accounting industries for several years. The Danish company was founded in 2012 as an online platform connecting small businesses with accountants and bookkeepers.
Recently, the startup repositioned its offering. Now it wants to provide small businesses with an all-in-one fintech platform covering banking, accounting, tax filing, etc.
The company also raised $73 million in 2021 and beyond $88 million in April 2024 (82 million euros), which implies it has loads of money for acquisitions. Ageras conquered Canteen AND Remuneration in Denmark; Tellowa in the Netherlands; Zerwant, a pan-European invoicing product; AND Made of bones, a German challenger bank for freelancers. This has also developed Menetoan accounting product for freelancers that jogs my memory of Indy in France.
As you may see, Ageras is building a portfolio of corporations offering adjoining products. In a sense, Kontist, Tellow, and now Shine offer more or less the same product. When you create an account, you’ll receive an IBAN number and a card. You can create invoices, receive money from your clients, receive reminders when it is time to pay taxes and generate accounting exports.
The M&A method is a way to diversify the company’s footprint in Europe, as fintech stays a fragmented market – there are some outliers that manage to successfully attract customers in many countries, but these are the exceptions.
Shine currently has over 100,000 customers and 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 rates).
Ageras and Société Générale have signed an exclusive acquisition agreement – and the transaction is pending regulatory approval.
While terms of the deal are not disclosed, Ageras said it expects to complete the transaction at some point in the first half of 2025. It added that it plans to retain all of Shine’s employees and businesses.