Paris, France – December 17, 2020 – Lydia, one of the fastest growing mobile financial services platforms in Europe, today announced an extension of its Series B round, raising an additional $86M led by Accel, the global venture capital firm. The total Series B funding round now sits at $131M, making it the largest round ever raised by a French fintech. All major existing shareholders actively participated to fund Lydia’s accelerating growth and expansion into becoming the one-stop shop for all the financial needs of the mobile generation. Amit Jhawar, the former General Manager of Venmo and Accel venture partner, led the investment for Accel and will join the Board of Directors.
In spite of economies being frozen globally due to COVID-19 lockdowns, Lydia added more users in 2020 than any year in its history, crossing the major threshold of 4 Million users in early Q4. With more users on the platform, Lydia has seen like-for-like user transactions grow more than 100% over the past year, demonstrating the immense value of its network that continues to grow exponentially. Users are also increasingly adopting Lydia’s broader financial services, such as its flexible debit card, money pools and direct deposit capabilities, as the pandemic has increased consumer demand for native mobile experiences that provide more insight and control over personal finances.
The new funding will be used to accelerate Lydia’s product roadmap to capture the shift in consumer preferences towards mobile-first apps with simple yet powerful digital banking and financial health capabilities. The company will also use the money to expand its geographic footprint. In 2020, Lydia laid the groundwork for international expansion with its successful launch in Portugal and expects to expand into more of Europe in 2021.
“The uncertainties of 2020 have provoked the younger, mobile generation to look for even more control and real-time visibility of their financial situation,” said Cyril Chiche, co-founder and CEO at Lydia. “This investment will not only enable us to respond to our customers’ needs faster and move into new markets, but also benefit from Amit’s experience building Venmo and the Accel team’s broader experience from journeys with some of the world’smost successful B2C companies. I believe Lydia now has exactly what it takes to become Europe’s leading financial super-app.”
“The Lydia team has solved a real customer pain point by creating experiences that are equally effective and elegant, ensuring almost 100% organic user growth. The passion of Lydia’s customers and the company’s ability to build a network without buying users has always impressed me and reminded me of Venmo. Lydia is a category defining verb in France just like Venmo invented mobile Peer to Peer payments in the US,” said Amit Jhawar, venture partner at Accel. “As soon as I met Cyril and the rest of the Lydia team, I knew I had to find a way to invest and be part of the next stage of their journey.”
About Lydia
Lydia is a Paris-based fast growing mobile financial services platform with over 4 Million users and a 30% market share among French Millennials, who use its brand as a verb. Co-founded by Antoine Porte and Cyril Chiche, Lydia launched in 2013. It is the most successful French B2C fintech having raised over $160 million in funding from investors such as Tencent, XAnge, New Alpha, Groupe Duval and Founders Future. Lydia is a founding member of France Fintech
About Accel
Accel is a global venture capital firm that is the first partner to exceptional teams everywhere, from inception through all phases of private company growth. Atlassian, Braintree, Cloudera, Crowdstrike, DJI, DocuSign, Dropbox, Etsy, Facebook, Flipkart, Freshworks, Jet, Pillpack, Qualtrics, Slack, Spotify, Supercell, Tenable, UiPath, and Venmo are among the companies Accel has backed over the past 35+ years. We help ambitious entrepreneurs build iconic global businesses.
