French fintech startup Lydia raises $100 million in Series C funding round

French crypto-friendly fintech startup Lydia has raised $100 million in a Series C funding round, per a report in TechCrunch. 

The latest capital raise reportedly helped Lydia attain unicorn status with a valuation of over $1 billion. 

The $100-million fundraise comes nearly a year after its Series B funding round of $86 million in December 2020.

The round was led by investors Tencent and Accel and saw participation from Dragoneer and Echo Street. The fintech startup aims to use the fresh capital to expand its footprint in Europe. The firm hopes to have onboarded 10 million Europeans by 2025.

Lydia did not immediately respond to Cointelegraph’s request for comment.

The app started as a peer-to-peer mobile payments app and later expanded to include cashback and personal loans. The startup recently launched its stock and crypto trading services in association with Australian crypto exchange Bitpanda. The fintech app is similar to Cash App or Venmo in terms of functionality and currently boasts 5.5 million users.

Related: PayPal to offer crypto payments for merchants, limited trading on Venmo.

The popularity of crypto payments in recent years has made fintech and mobile trading apps the biggest winners. Several mobile payment giants and fintech trading apps, such as PayPal, Robinhood and Venmo, have opened the gates for crypto payments for millions of users and merchants alike.

Mainstream mobile payment service providers have already joined the crypto league, and now even local payment processors are looking to bank on crypto’s popularity. Indian mobile payment processor Paytm had recently expressed interest in crypto payments following clarity on regulations from the government.