Home / Deals / Arma Partners advises Lydia on its Series B capital raise led by Tencent

Arma Partners advises Lydia on its Series B capital raise led by Tencent
Jan 2020
growth investment by
  • Sector: Digital Banking & Payments
  • Deal Type: Founder-led Businesses; Private Capital; Strategic Deals
  • Engagement type: Fundraise
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Arma Partners is pleased to announce that it has acted as exclusive financial advisor to Lydia on its $45 million Series B growth investment round led by Tencent, one of Asia’s leading technology and internet conglomerates.

Headquartered in Paris, Lydia is one of the fastest growing mobile financial services platforms in France with over 3 million users and a 25% market share among millennials. Lydia has recently expanded its product offering to become a one-stop shop financial application. Existing shareholders Open CNP, XAnge and New Alpha participated in the round.

The transaction underlines Arma Partners’ deep sector expertise in Digital Banking and Payments as well as the capabilities of our Private Capital practice, utilising its strong connectivity across the full breadth of relevant investor categories globally, including Asia. The transaction highlights the firm’s growing footprint in the French scale-up ecosystem, following transactions for Evaneos, Heetch and Talentsoft.

  • Founded in 2011, Lydia is the leading French peer to peer payments application designed to make payments easier for individuals and businesses
  • The Company’s application is a social interface to link phone with card and pay anyone with one app, enabling users to make issue-free payments through a mobile wallet system without carrying any cheques or ATM card
  • Lydia is headquartered in Paris and currently operates across Europe, including France, UK, Spain and Portugal
  • Since its foundation, Lydia has been downloaded by nearly 3 million individuals and by 25% of the 18-30 year old in France
  • Tencent Holdings Limited (“Tencent”) is one of Asia’s largest Internet conglomerates with businesses and investments in a wide variety of Internet services and contents
  • Key services include communication and social networking, online PC and mobile games, content, utilities, the cloud and fintech
  • Tencent’s products and applications include WeChat (Social Media App), QQ (Instant Messaging), Tenpay (Payment Platform) and QQ Music (Music Streaming)
  • The largest shareholder of Tencent is Naspers Limited, the South African multinational Internet group, which holds a c. 31% stake (1) in the Company
  • The capital will support the Company’s next growth phase through:
  • Facilitating further penetration in the European market
  • Accelerating Lydia’s growth ambitions in the peer to peer payments market
  • Strengthening partnerships and relationships within the financial industry
  • Introduction to the shareholder base of a well-known and long-term provider of (strategic) capital
  • Arma Partners served as exclusive financial advisor to Lydia on the transaction
  • The transaction underscores Arma’s deep sector expertise in Digital Banking and Payments and strengthens its track record of successful capital raises in the French scale-up ecosystem (following transactions for Evaneos, Heetch and Talentsoft)
  • The transaction further underlines the breadth of Arma’s developing Private & Growth Capital franchise and its ability to access diverse pools of capital,  globally
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