The startup boom of the last two decades has shown us many apps shaping the way we do our financial tasks. The arrival of many apps and websites has changed the way we do financial transactions. From 90’s PayPal to 2010’s Stripe. The financial landscape is changing quicker than banks can catch up with it. Many startups came and went bust, trying to make their mark on the market. However, one startup is making its mark by challenging other companies’ authority already existing – Lydia, a French payment processing app. Recently, it has raised funds in the Series B round.
Venture capital firm Accel is leading the funding round with other shareholders. Earlier, it raised massive funding of $45 million in January this year. Tencent was the lead investor in that round. Now, it raised $86 million, making the total investment worth $131 million this year.
Although Lydia didn’t openly discuss anything about the valuation of the funding raised, the co-founder Cyril Chiche has given information that the startup raised significant investment in Series B.
The head of investment for Accel on Lydia is Amit Jhawar, who has joined Accel as a partner this year and will be joining the BoD of Lydia soon. Jhawar is known for his roles as CFO and COO of Braintree in 2011. PayPal acquired Braintree and now operates as its division.
Braintree had acquired Venmo, another payment app. Both later became divisions of PayPal. Jhawar has played an important role in scaling Venmo. More than 52 million users are in the US of Venmo.
What’s interesting about Lydia
If you are using Lydia, you get a virtual card from them that works well with other payment processing platforms like Google Pay and Apple. There’s an option of using a physical plastic card as well. You can directly deposit funds in the Lydia account, as you receive IBAN with it. Well, that’s not it. You can create ‘money pots’ on Lydia. What is a money pot? You may be thinking. It’s a feature that allows you to collect money from multiple people by sharing the link to a money pot, just like a mini-fundraiser. It also shows you your multiple bank accounts.
You can directly donate funds to various charities tied up with Lydia and receive a credit line. Lydia stands out from the outdated traditional banking accounts. It’s quite flexible in features. It allows you to set up multiple sub-accounts.
For example, you can create a sub-account and save money in it for bills. Another sub-account for savings for rainy days. Another sub-account for separating funds you have been saving up for throwing a house party for your friends. Do you know any bank that allows a cool feature like this? Well, no, right? That’s how apps like Lydia are challenging the dominance of traditional banks.
The company has revealed that it will be entirely upgrading the infrastructure. They are going to bring new products with the foundation of that new infrastructure. Currently, Lydia is operating in Europe, with plans to expand into other countries in the future.
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