Kumulus Partners acted as the exclusive financial adviser to Argenta in establishing its commercial partnership with Cake, a Belgian banking app company. Argenta will integrate the cashback functionality from Cake within its existing Argenta-app, allowing its 560.000 app users to choose to automatically receive refunds on purchases at connected companies. This partnership is a new step in the Open Banking and digital strategy of Argenta. As part of the partnership, Argenta will also invest €1,5 million in Cake, which will use these funds to support the further roll-out of its product offering.
Cake has developed a banking app which combines the transaction information of all bank accounts of its users. The app provides its users proactive insights in their income and spending patterns. The marketing revenue generated from the anonymized information is shared with the app users through cashback programs and user rewards, generating tangible benefits from their bank accounts. The partnership with Argenta offers a strong acceleration in the development of Cake. Through the inflow of Argenta users, Cake will reinforce its position as marketing platform, generating more benefits for its users.
Kumulus Partners provided an objective benchmark in the discussion on valuation of Cake. Furthermore, Kumulus analysed and assisted Argenta in the negotiations regarding the potential transaction structures to get an optimal alignment between the interests of Argenta and its customers, and the continued involvement and freedom to operate for the founders of Cake.
