Société Générale reportedly seeks new buyer for neobank Shine
Société Générale is reportedly considering selling Shine, the neobank for freelancers and small businesses it acquired in mid-2020, according to French newspaper Les Echos.
Société Générale is reportedly putting Shine up for sale
The report by Les Echos says the French banking giant is currently weighing up its options for how it can part ways with Shine and is approaching potential buyers.
Launched in 2018, Shine initially found its footing in the neobanking market with business accounts and debit cards tailored specifically to freelancers, sole traders and small businesses, powered by Société Générale’s Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) subsidiary Treezor.
When the acquisition was announced in 2020, Société Générale’s French retail banking director, Marie-Christine Ducholet, said at the time that the start-up appealed to the bank “because it reinforces our relational promise to offer customers the best of human and digital”, adding it would also “allow us to go a step further in our open banking strategy”.
In the four years since the acquisition, Société Générale claims to have doubled the neobank’s customer and employee headcount while also tripling its revenues.
However, despite this achievement, it seems the bank is now looking to shed Shine in a bid to cut costs following a wider downturn in France’s retail and online banking market.
Dutch financial services firm ING confirmed its departure from the market in December 2021, citing a lack of room to scale as one of the causes behind its decision.
In June last year, it was announced that French telecommunications giant Orange Group was in exclusive negotiations with BNP Paribas to take on its Orange Bank customers as the firm looks to withdraw from the retail banking market.
As recently as last month, La Banque Postale announced that it was planning to shutter its 100% mobile bank offering, Ma French Bank, having “not attained profitability nor achieved financial success”.
