FinTech: Crédit Agricole Buys Out Linxo

Crédit Agricole will be holding a majority share in the French account aggregation and payment initiation specialist Linxo.

Goal: feature innovative, platform-based banking services.
Crédit Agricole has been among the FinTech’s shareholders since 2016. Their share will now account for 85% of Linxo’s capital through their in-house investment fund Fireca, and payment subsidiary, Crédit Agricole Payment Services.
Linxo’s executives and founders will be holding the remaining 15%. This transaction must still be approved by the ACPR.
Linxo was founded in 2010. Trey crafted APIs, as well as white label mobile apps for FinTechs, banks and insurance groups. Crédit Agricole has already been relying on their white label account aggregation services. This investment may boost these services group-wide.
So far, no information as to the amount of this transaction has been disclosed.

Linxo: Key Figures

81 employees

3M users

350,000 account synchronisations each day

Access to roughly 320 accounts and account types

Strategic challenge. Crédit Agricole claims that this capital investment in Linxo is in line with the group’s plan to rely on payment services as a major lever for improving customer loyalty and acquisition. The point would be to provide their customers with innovative payment services meeting the highest market standards.
Through this agreement, Crédit Agricole will be well positioned to look into a platform’s development model: an aspect already tested by BBVA in Spain and KBC in Belgium, for instance. To this respect, LCL just launched a platform for non-financial services intended for students.
Win-win merger. Linxo, for their part, will benefit from the scale of a leading European banking group to further aim for institutional clients. And this investment is an opportunity for the FinTech to boost their offer in France and on an international level.

In June 2019, Linxo said they intended to feature payment accounts starting in 2020. This move could help them withstand competition from Bankin’, which has mainly been focusing on financial coaching.
Linxo isn’t the first French account aggregation specialist to attract a banking industry giant. In July 2019, Crédit Mutuel Arkéa acquired the FinTech Budget Insight which also works on aggregating financial data. And the third independent French aggregation start-up Bankin’ attracted Casino’s attention and an investment in their capital.

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