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Yesterday, fintech startup Lydia unveiled a model new design for its monetary tremendous app. And it’s an opinionated tackle cell funds — not only a contemporary coat of paint. I sat down with the corporate’s founders to debate the pondering and imaginative and prescient for the way forward for Lydia.
In some ways, Lydia isn’t standing nonetheless and retains reinventing itself. The corporate began as a peer-to-peer cost app for the French market. For the primary time, folks may ship and obtain cash immediately from their smartphones.
The app has developed drastically over the previous few years. The corporate just lately reached unicorn standing and the workforce has been iterating with extra companies and options.
Particularly, now you can use your Lydia account as a substitute for an everyday checking account. Customers can order a debit card, and ship and obtain cash via a singular IBAN. Customers can also commerce cryptocurrencies, shares, valuable metals and ETFs.
With this new design, the corporate is streamlining its app with a transparent separation between your exercise, your accounts, your playing cards and your buying and selling exercise. Extra importantly, the corporate is positioning its cell app as a social product — not a fintech product.
Constructing the muse for the subsequent 10 years
After I met with Lydia’s co-founders Cyril Chiche and Antoine Porte, they each had learn my latest article on Zenly, one other common social app designed in Paris. They usually discovered some similarities between the brand new Lydia and the brand new Zenly.
“We simply despatched a publication to our person base that unveils a brand new chapter for Lydia, laying down the plan for the subsequent 10 years — similar to Zenly,” co-founder and Chief Product Officer Antoine Porte advised me.
It really works however it has by no means been designed for people. Cyril Chiche
This isn’t a random milestone. Lydia launched the primary model of its app 9 years in the past. “If you happen to rely the gestation interval, it’s been 10 years,” Porte mentioned.
The corporate has managed to draw 5.5 million customers. And a fraction of them have now determined to make use of Lydia as their main account.
“The extra we progress in monetary and banking companies, the extra we attempt to intellectualize the rationale why folks dislike their financial institution,” co-founder and CEO Cyril Chiche advised me.
“When digging additional, you understand how banks have been utilizing expertise. They constructed an attractive system for interbank actions. You may transfer cash from one finish of the globe to the opposite. It really works however it has by no means been designed for people,” he added.
This sums up Lydia’s design language fairly effectively. The workforce desires to construct an app that’s “designed for people”. As an example, somebody who has by no means used a financial institution app earlier than shouldn’t need to find out about SEPA transfers and IBANs earlier than sending cash to a member of the family.
Once you open the up to date model of Lydia, the primary tab has been drastically cleaned up. It’s now an exercise feed together with your newest transactions. There are two buttons on the prime of the display screen — obtain and pay.
On the backside of the display screen, there’s a brand new tab bar with buttons which can be clearly labeled. You not need to guess which button does what.
The second tab reveals your accounts — your primary Lydia account, your sub-accounts and your financial institution accounts that you’ve got aggregated within the app. Private accounts and shared accounts are actually separated into two sections.
The third tab enables you to entry your playing cards and management them from there. Buying and selling now will get its personal tab, separated from the remainder of the app. If you happen to hardly ever open Lydia, it’s now a lot simpler to grasp the place it’s best to faucet to entry what you need to entry.
What’s cash?
As French entrepreneurs who overthink the whole lot a bit an excessive amount of, Lydia’s founders maintain going again to the definition of the phrases they use. “We now have forgotten the very cause why cash exists as a result of we view cash as an accounting software,” Porte mentioned.
“Cash has a which means. It’s both a mission or a reminiscence,” Chiche added later within the dialog.
And but, when folks open their financial institution app, it appears like opening an Excel spreadsheet. Worse, it usually fosters a variety of destructive ideas.
“Your account has solely been credited as soon as and the whole lot else is destructive operations. Once you take a look at your account assertion, you’re feeling such as you tousled,” Chiche mentioned.
Cash is what you do with it. Antoine Porte
In line with the founders, there’s an excessive amount of guilt concerned with banking. That’s why you not see your account steadiness while you open Lydia. It’s important to faucet on the second tab to view it. That’s additionally why you don’t see the € signal subsequent to each transaction. The corporate doesn’t need to emphasize the accounting side of your transactions.
“The worst factor is neobanks that present you a chart of your steadiness over time,” Chiche mentioned.
“We want a brand new definition for cash. Cash is not cash, payments or bodily issues. That may very well be the chance to return to the origin — cash is what you do with it,” Porte mentioned.
A fintech app or a social app
Every transaction in Lydia may very well be thought-about as an occasion. You may open the transaction card, change the identify and add emojis in order that it means one thing to you. As an example, you could need to put your child’s identify on the nursery invoice.
Right this moment, the corporate goes one step additional. Customers can add a photograph to every transaction. That appears a bit odd at first, however Lydia actually believes it has a shot at constructing one of the best social journaling app.
Chances are you’ll suppose that journaling is a factor of the previous. However a technology of smartphone customers have been journaling on daily basis with out even realizing it.
The journal itself has developed. As a substitute of shopping for a flowery pocket book and spending quarter-hour on daily basis writing concerning the present day, folks take pictures with their telephones. The digicam roll has change into a form of ubiquitous, easy journal.
Lydia is so easy and quick that it has all the time been thought-about as a utility app. But it surely has all the time been a social app. Antoine Porte
Lydia plans to benefit from that by augmenting the digicam roll. First, your previous monetary transactions symbolize a construction. Second, including a photograph makes a transaction far more private. “If you happen to don’t know what photograph it’s best to use, it in all probability implies that it was an pointless expense,” Porte mentioned.
Third, it turns every transaction into a possible social put up. You may swipe via your transactions similar to you’ll swipe via pictures in a photograph album. If it’s a shared expense, different customers will see the photograph. It additionally creates a virality issue as folks may begin asking why you’re taking a photograph. You might think about a function that allows you to share a transaction in different apps as effectively.
Extra importantly, it opens up a variety of prospects. A card transaction additionally occurs at a particular place and at a particular time. Lydia may populate the transaction display screen with extra knowledge concerning the place you visited. As quickly as Foursquare invented check-ins, folks began speaking about check-in fatigue. Perhaps essentially the most highly effective check-ins are your card funds.
It brings us to the primary query. Is Lydia a fintech app or a social app?
“Lydia is so easy and quick that it has all the time been thought-about as a utility app. But it surely has all the time been a social app,” Porte advised me.
I don’t suppose it’s so simple as that. Some customers will nonetheless use Lydia a number of instances a month to ship and obtain cash. However a small, extremely engaged portion of the person base may see the social potential of Lydia.
We don’t have to provide you with a definitive reply proper now, because the redesign is a transparent enchancment over the earlier model of the app. “Folks inform us our opponents are Revolut, however they’re bankers,” Porte mentioned.
“We need to create the WhatsApp of cash as an alternative,” he added.
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