What happened: French telecommunication provider Orange has signed a memorandum to sell Anytime to Crédit Coopératif (Orange). Anytime was acquired by Orange Bank in 2021 and offers financial services to associations. Crédit Coopératif is a cooperative bank with a strong focus on this customer group.
My comment: It was an anticipated move as Orange is divesting from all of its banking activities, which has already resulted in the takeover of Orange Bank by BNP Paribas (Orange). While it always sounds like bad news when a non-financial brand exits its financial service offering, I would compare this to the move of British supermarket chains Tesco and Sainsbury’s. These companies have opted for a fully regulated solution, which involves owning and maintaining a bank. They began their efforts at a time when a bank licence seemed like the best option for a corporation of that size. While telecommunication and supermarkets are widely different, they both have little overlap with financial services. Therefore, building a great embedded banking product is challenging, and the financial products of these three companies were pretty comparable to any other neo- or incumbent bank, so there was no real ‘embedded advantage’.
