Froda, the Swedish embedded financing platform for small businesses, has expanded into France through a partnership with Shine, bringing its digital financing offering directly into the financial platform used by French freelancers and small businesses.
France becomes Froda’s eighth European market, following its expansion across the Nordics, the UK, Ireland and Germany. The launch will make Froda’s financing available through the Shine app to around 200,000 self-employed people and small businesses.
Eligible businesses can complete financing applications and receive credit decisions in real time, with loans paid out the same day, often within an hour. Froda uses real banking data to automate credit assessments and embeds financing into the banking, accounting and payment platforms businesses already use.
France recorded 1.16 million new businesses in 2025, according to France’s national statistics agency INSEE. Small businesses account for 99% of French companies and employ 6.9 million people, but smaller financing needs can be difficult for traditional lenders to serve because the cost of assessing a small loan can be similar to that of a much larger facility.
Founded in Sweden in 2015, Froda has provided more than €2bn in financing to 30,000 small businesses and financed more than 160,000 loans across Europe. It operates in France as a Swedish credit institution supervised by the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority and under EU passporting rules.
The launch builds on an existing relationship between Froda and the Shine group. Kontist in Germany and Billy in Denmark already offer business loans through Froda’s embedded financing platform, making France the third and largest market in which the two companies are working together.
The companies ran a pilot with a controlled group of Shine customers over the summer before beginning the wider rollout earlier this month.
Froda CEO and co-founder Olle Lundin said, “France is creating more businesses than ever, but the financing hasn’t followed. A €5,000 investment can be just as decisive for a small business as a €500,000 investment is for a larger company. The difference is that the economics of traditional lending make those smaller amounts harder to serve.”
Shine CEO and co-founder Rico Adlor-Andersen added, “Our ambition has always been to give entrepreneurs everything they need to manage their business in one place, and fast, fair financing is a key part of that.”
The French offering is supported by a microfinancing guarantee from the European Investment Fund under the EU’s InvestEU programme, which works with financial partners such as Froda to extend financing to entrepreneurs who may otherwise have limited access to funding.
Froda plans to add further partners in France as it expands its embedded lending proposition. The company said its partner base now spans fintechs, platforms and established banking institutions across the Nordics, UK, Ireland, Germany and France.
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