Universal retail banking fintech Compte-Nickel signs a partnership agreement for the acquisition of 95% of its shares by BNP Paribas.

Universal retail banking fintech Compte-Nickel signs a partnership agreement for the acquisition of 95% of its shares by BNP Paribas.

The French fintech company, which has developed a unique universal offering for current account and payment services in real-time, has succeeded in creating more than 540.000 bank accounts in three years. Its partnership with BNP Paribas will help it accelerate new customer acquisition, with a target of two million accounts open by 2020. Compte Nickel has been supported by Partech Ventures since 2015 and by Eight Roads Ventures since 2016.

 

Since 2015, Partech Ventures has been attracted by the complementary expertise of Compte-Nickel’s founders Ryad Boulanouar and Hugues Le Bret, and especially by the social inclusion dimension of their project. From the beginning Compte-Nickel went against the mdel of most of most retails banks in the fintech sector, which were often pure-players which betting on the conversion of pre-qualified users into customers.
“The intuition of the founders, their understanding of an unexplored opportunity in the French banking sector, and the way they have managed to deploy their operations is impressive. Compte-Nickel has been the fastest growing retail banking fintech in Europe and it has overcome the most difficult barrier to entry in this sector, customer trust, without any marketing investment”, said Philippe Collombel, Co-Managing Partner, Partech Ventures.

“Compte-Nickel is not a company, it’s a movement which is changing the face of banking in France. It has been an honour to work with a fintech company that seeks to bank the many rather than the few, using a model that other countries could learn from. This news shows great foresight by BNP Paribas and we wish the Compte-Nickel team all the best for the future” added Davor Hebel, Managing Partner, Eight Roads Ventures Europe.

“Partech Ventures was the first VC to believe in Compte-Nickel: the team have supported us since September 2015 and accompanied us in all strategic decisions, including when they introduced us to the BNP Paribas group. They also introduced us to Arnaud Giraudon who became the Managing Director of the company”, commented Hugues Le Bret, President of Financière des Paiements Electroniques (Compte-Nickel).

Only a few days after the announcement of the Altice acquisition of Teads (also supported by Partech Ventures), this latest development takes place within a European scene that seems more and more mature in the development of synergies and convergences of all types between startups and large corporates.