In Brief:
- Lydia raised $100 million in Series C financing.
- The firm is now worth more than $1 billion after the investment round.
- Many of Lydia’s current investors are raising their interests.
Lydia, a French finance company, has raised a $100 million Series C financing, just a few weeks after offering stock and crypto trading. The firm is now worth more than $1 billion as a result of this investment round.
Many of Lydia’s current investors, such as Tencent, Accel, and Founders Future, are raising their interests, while Dragoneer and Echo Street are making their first investments in the company.
“What’s really impressive with this round is that it is primarily financed by existing investors,” stated Cyril Chiche, Lydia co-founder and CEO. Chiche also acknowledged that Lydia’s valuation has risen significantly since last year’s round.
Lydia hopes to increase involvement by offering other items in addition to peer-to-peer payments. The business model is straightforward. Everything is free when one only sends and receives a few payments through the app. Premium subscriptions are available if anyone wants to go even further.
Lydia started off as a peer-to-peer payment software. You can send and receive mobile payments with other Lydia users after inputting your debit card and bank data. It gradually became France’s most popular mobile payment app.
The app has expanded significantly over the previous several years to become a financial super app with a diverse set of features and financial solutions. Additionally, Lydia also offers small loans ranging from €100 to €3,000, savings accounts, and now trading in addition to daily payments.
The new crypto and stock trading relationship with Bitpanda, in particular, makes investing small sums of money whenever they want considerably easier.
Lydia and Bitpanda offer fractional shares, allowing you to acquire €10 worth of Apple stock at any time – this is a first for the French market.
So far, Lydia has garnered 5.5 million users. More importantly, one-third of all French adults aged 18 to 35 have a Lydia account. The firm further plans to hire 800 individuals over the next three years, with 160 of them starting in 2022. Lydia aspires to have ten million consumers in Europe using it as their primary account by 2025.
Chiche also added, “what we’re experiencing is the reinvention of the banking industry.” People will not manage money in the same way in a few years, he claims. Some businesses will adapt, while others will not.
He believes that some heritage athletes may possess the necessary skills to remain relevant in the future. But, of course, he believes Lydia can help to simplify retail banking and make it more accessible to a wider range of people.
