Cloud software company Cegid, which specializes in fintech solutions, has signed an agreement to purchase Shine, a platform focusing on small business accounting and financial services. This move is intended to enable the company to create what it calls the first fully integrated, cloud-native, and AI-powered financial hub for medium and small businesses (SMBs) and the accounting sector in Europe. Neither the money nor the detailed terms of the transaction were made public. Besides that, the acquisition is still dependent on obtaining regulatory approval.
Established in 2012, Shine is a provider of digital services to small businesses, which cover such areas as business banking, accounting, payroll, invoicing, and tax management. Presently, the company is catering to more than 450,000 European SMBs and is generating close to €100 million in annual turnover. Société Générale was the previous owner of Shine. However, last year Ageras, the Danish financial software group, invested by Investcorp, bought it.
By merging with Cegid, Shine aims to harness its technology and network of SME clients for Cegid’s cloud-based initiatives in management, HR and tax software. Together, they will offer solutions related to e-invoicing, bookkeeping, digital payments, embedded finance, payroll and multi-currency digital banking. Their goal is to become the “preferred financial copilot for European SMBs and accountants.”
Expansion Strategy and Market Reach
According to Cegid, one of the factors that would help Shine rapidly deploy embedded finance features in fresh markets is the obstinate attention to detail of their cloud infrastructure and the well-established brand. Post-acquisition, the coherent platform will be the community of small and medium enterprises, and accountants in France, Germany, Denmark, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands, with more extending their services.
This acquisition is a part of Cegid’s strategic plan over the years, which has been a combination of financial and ERP software providers targeted at the regional market, leading to a deeply integrated European SMB ecosystem. This is the result of Cegid’s buying strategy which started with the acquisition of Primavera in Spain (2022) and Sevdesk in Germany (2025), thereby extending its reach and integration in key EU markets. Besides, Cegid’s merger is a reflection of the consolidation trend witnessed in the fintech and accounting technology sectors, which demand scalability, interoperability and real-time data access increasingly.
Leadership Vision
In an announcement made on LinkedIn, Shine’s CEO and co-founder, Rico Anderson, expressed his satisfaction with the way the two firms were strategically positioned for a successful alliance:
“Combining Cegid’s Small Business and Accountant unit with Shine, we become a champion of +2,000 employees, who serve more than one million businesses, with a network of 15,000 accountants — all guided by one purpose and one direction: to build the Eiffel Tower of Europe for accounting and banking services to small businesses and their accountants.”
Cegid claims that the combination of the two companies’ funds and efforts will enable them to speed up the digital transformation of the financial administration of small businesses. This is one of the areas where manual processes are still dominant even though there is a strong demand for automation, AI-driven forecasting, and integrated compliance solutions. It will also keep abreast with the regulations and help fulfill the EU e-invoicing mandates, tax digitisation reform and payroll reporting standards set across Europe, which are becoming increasingly uniform across the continent.
Industry Context
This acquisition is supported by the rapid changes of the SME financial technology sector. The driving force behind the regional platform consolidation, which is slowly becoming the key to competing with one another, is the acceleration of embedded finance together with the growing sophistication of the accounting automation. The competition is getting tougher between the existing financial institutions, technology companies, and providers of the accounting SaaS sector, with all of them trying to present the most comprehensive, end-to-end, and unified ecosystems that seamlessly incorporate banking, accounting, payments, and compliance.
For Cegid, this transaction is a tactical move that enables the company to challenge more directly contenders such as Sage, Xero, QuickBooks, and rapidly growing European fintechs that provide integrated business financial management tools.
It is anticipated that after regulatory clearances and the establishment of operational alignment structures, Shine will be gradually nested in Cegid’s portfolio sometime next year.
