Four years after acquisition Shinea French fintech startup that offers bank accounts to freelancers and micro-enterprises, Société Générale has announced plans to sell Shine to Agera.
In 2020, TechCrunch reported that Société Générale spent around €100 million to acquire Shine. It wasn’t a huge acquisition, but it attracted a lot of coverage at the time because it was more than just a technology or talent deal. Société Générale is not a name that appears very often in the news for acquiring tech startups.
In short, the financial institution wanted to repeat 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 be familiar with the company, but in recent years it has been a consolidator in the fintech and accounting space. The Danish company was founded in 2012 as an online marketplace that connects small businesses with accountants and bookkeepers.
Most recently, the startup repositioned its offering. Now it wants to provide an all-in-one fintech platform for small businesses that covers banking, accounting, tax returns, etc.
The company also raised $73 million in 2021 and another $88 million in April 2024 (€82 million), meaning it has a ton of cash for acquisitions. acquired by Ageras Bat and Salary in Denmark, Tellow in Holland, Zervada pan-European pricing product and Const, a German challenger bank for freelancers. It has also been developed Menettoan accounting product for freelancers that reminds me of Indy in France.
As you can see, Ageras is building a portfolio of companies that offer adjacent products. In a way, Kontist, Tellow and now Shine offer pretty much the same product. When you create an account, you get an IBAN and a card. You can create invoices, receive money from your customers, get reminders when it’s time to pay your taxes and create 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 revenues of €31.7 million ($34 million at today’s exchange rate).
Ageras and Société Générale signed an exclusive acquisition agreement. While terms of the deal remain unknown, Ageras says it expects to close the transaction sometime in the first half of 2025. Ageras plans to retain all Shine employees and operations.
