French Startup Lydia Raises $16M to Become the PayPal of Mobile Payments

| Updated
by Julia Sakovich · 3 min read
French Startup Lydia Raises $16M to Become the PayPal of Mobile Payments
Photo: Lydia / Twitter

Having ambitious plans to replace PayPal, Lydia has already become a mobile payment leader in France and is not going to stop.

Though not being the only one of its type, French payment startup Lydia has recently raised 13 million euros. It means that the total amount raised by the startup has overcome the mark of 23 million euros.

The round was led by CNP Assurances that joined the group of company’s existing investors. Among them are XAnge, New Alpha AM, Oddo BHF and Groupe Duval who have each made follow-on investments. The raised funds will give Lydia a possibility to offers its clients new services, and to enhance its growth in France, the UK, Ireland, Portugal and Spain, as well as in other European countries.

At the very beginning of its history Lydia attracted users by offering them free and instant transactions between friends. Now, it provides an opportunity to pay in store, online and do some more things.

Payments with Lydia on e-commerce websites are really fast and easy as users don’t need to enter their phone numbers or any cards information. Moreover, payments in store can also become much more comfortable with the app, the user can just enter the amount and show a QR code to the cashier who will scan the barcode with a reader that is used for scanning products.

The company offers a credit card that is connected to the user’s Lydia account for payments in places that do not accept the its payment method. Having their own IBAN, customers are able to replenish their balance, activate or deactivate features in real time and more.

Since its launch in 2013, Lydia has gained enormous popularity among 18-35 year olds. At the end of 2017 the number of users reached one million with 2,000 new users joining daily. In general, Lydia processes around 1 million transactions per month with monthly volume of around €25 million. Newcomers are still mostly interested in the peer-to-peer payment feature, while more experienced users and card users utilize Lydia more and more to pay businesses.

According to the company’s co-founder and CEO Cyril Chiche, Lydia has never grown so fast. For 2018 the team has ambitious plans to grow more quickly than PayPal in France.

An interesting detail that the CEO noticed is that the growth rate for transactions is higher than the user growth rate, which means that the number of transactions that one user carries out per month is increasing.

Recently launched in the U.K., Ireland, Spain and Portugal, Lydia is working on conquering new markets. Germany and Austria are its next key priorities, with some more European countries to follow. At the moment, Lydia has around 40 employees but the company wants to expand its staff and to have 60 employees by the end of 2018, and 90 employees by the end of 2019. As for the services offered, the company’s CEO promised to share their plans in the nearest future.

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