Lydia secures $86 mn in Series B extension round led by Accel

By Megha Bhattacharya

French FinTech Lydia announced the extension of its Series B with $86 million funding led by Accel. This brings the total Series B funding round to $131 million. Amit Jhawar, the former General Manager of Venmo and Accel venture partner, led the investment for Accel and will join the Board of Directors.

“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’s most successful B2C companies. I believe Lydia now has exactly what it takes to become Europe’s leading financial super-app.”

According to Lydia, the new funding will be used to speed up the company’s product roadmap. The company will also use the funding to expand its geographic footprint. In 2020, Lydia laid the groundwork for international expansion with its launch in Portugal and expects to expand into more of Europe in 2021.

“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.”

Recently, Lydia selected open banking tech provider Tink with an aim to utilise access to PSD2 APIs across Europe. The companies have joined forces to work on boosting bank account connectivity for improving the app’s user experience. The new open banking connectivity will be released in the coming weeks.