You know you’ve made it when your brand name becomes a verb or is synonymous with an entire category. It's the ultimate confirmation of market-leading success. In France "Faire un Lydia" has become the common expression for sending money to someone via a peer-to-peer transaction. And the banking app, Lydia, is the brand behind this contemporary cultural phenomenon.
Founded by Cyril Chiche and Antoine Porte in 2013, Lydia has evolved continuously and has been described variously as a neo bank, a financial super app, and even as a social app - in which images, emojis, and messages are exchanged alongside payments. The company reached unicorn status in 2021, has over 6 million users, and is truly the emblem of France’s fintech prowess.
To have the Lydia app in your pocket is to have maximum control of your cash at your fingertips. From easy account management and savings to virtual cards, digital wallets, contactless payments and money transfers - Lydia is enabling people in France and beyond to move and manage their money with seamless ease. That’s why we see more and more people move from traditional banks to the Lydia app. For many in France Lydia is now their primary bank.
But behind every sublime digital experience, there is a complex if invisible machinery at work. This is especially true in payments and money movement where the stars must continuously align across a complex array of scheme rules, issuer bank preferences, regulatory requirements, and tech performance. If one single piece of the puzzle is out of place the entire process fails. That's obviously antithetical to the delightful user experience that Lydia stands for. This is why Chiche and Porte have always been particularly savvy about selecting the fintech partners who will help ensure that Lydia’s users always have the ideal end-to-end experience.
In 2019 Lydia brought onboard Checkout.com to process its customers' transactions. With the local acquiring licenses, access to optimal scheme products such as Account Funding Transfer, excellent issuer bank relationships, and the ability to process Cartes Bancaires, Checkout.com has optimized the cost and performance of payments for Lydia. This has resulted in a 4% uplift in acceptance rates during 2023 while maintaining close to 0% fraud rate.
This boost in performance has empowered Lydia to deliver optimal UX to its customers. That means the hassle-free, low cost and high-speed money movement services that Lydia users have come to expect. With over 99.99% uptime managed by a team of Checkout.com’s dedicated payments experts, who are on hand to support 24/7, the partnership has allowed the team at France’s leading fintech app to focus on what they do best: innovation.
As the founder of a fintech, I knew exactly what I was looking for in my fintech partners,” says Lydia CEO Cyril Chiche.
Guillaume Pousaz, CEO at Checkout.com is also excited about the now long-standing partnership with Lydia. “We chase peak performance in the payments because we know this powers the relationship between our customers and their customers,” says Pousaz.
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