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Austrian crypto exchange Bitpanda and French mobile payments app Lydia have entered a partnership to offer the app’s 5.5 million users the option to invest in almost 200 digital assets, CoinDesk reported.
On Monday, Bitpanda announced that its digital asset investment product, enabling trading built for scale and speed, is now fully integrated with Lydia’s payments app. This will allow Lydia’s users to invest in over 170 digital assets, ranging from precious metals and cryptocurrencies to commission-free fractional stocks and ETFs. The exchange will execute the transactions.
The pluses of Bitpanda White Label
With Bitpanda’s investment product, users select building blocks and design their own trading solution. They also connect to individual modules via API. The trading infrastructure gives them access to the assets of their choice around the clock. Users can choose from the intuitive API-based modules or build on top of Bitpanda’s out-of-the-box components.
Bitpanda expanding European presence
Austria’s first tech unicorn joined forces with an Italian open-finance platform to let Italian fintechs and banks access digital asset trading services this year. They also appointed Joshua Barraclough, a previous JPMorgan executive, as the new CEO of its trading platform to promote growth in Europe.
Cofounder and co-CEO of Bitpanda Eric Demuth wrote in an email to CoinDesk:
This collaboration is fully aligned with our mission to bring digital assets into mainstream adoption and to improve investment literacy in Europe and beyond. France is a key market for Bitpanda and this is why we are currently opening up a local office in Paris and building a local team to own the growth in the market.
Lydia cofounder and CEO Cyril Chiche added:
We are the first on the French market to provide such an extensive range of digital assets.
The French market attracts many cryptocurrency exchanges. In November, Binance invested $116 million in an R&D project to help grow the blockchain industry in France.
Full licensing coverage
Bitpanda’s partners can rely on their status as a registered digital asset service provider (DASP) with MiFID II and PSD 2 licensing among other types. After a Series C funding round this year, Bitpanda’s value reached $4.1 billion.
Tencent and Accel have invested in Lydia
Lydia raised $131 million in two funding rounds in 2020, TechCrunch reported. Among its investors are Chinese tech giant Tencent and venture capital firm Accel. Lydia offers express loans, current and shared accounts, mobile payments, instant bank transfers, and more.
