Lydia and Slack are two charming services and I like using them. So when I learned the two of them were having a baby together, you bet I was excited.
Lydia is a French payment app, a sort of Venmo for Europe like stealth startup Cookies. It lets you instantly send and receive money with your friends without paying any fee. And it’s a great alternative to cash.
The result of the Slack integration is a Slack bot. Once you install the bot for your Slack, it will monitor at-mentions and figure out if you’re trying to send money.
For instance, you could say “I hope you enjoyed the burgers. @jordan @matt you owe me €10 each. cc @lydia.” Then, Jordan and Matt receive a notification on their phones asking them to confirm the payment. They can review and accept and you get back your €20.
What if they don’t have Lydia? Non-Lydia users receive a link to pay using their credit cards. They just have to open a web page and enter their credit card information. If you are collecting payments and don’t have a Lydia account, you can enter your IBAN to get the money on your bank account directly.
For small companies based in France, this could be a great way to pay for your lunch or even pay back expenses. Instead of having to fiddle with your bank account’s web interface, you can mention Lydia on Slack and send payments in no time.
This is a step in the right direction for Lydia. Having a great app is one thing, but Lydia can also leverage its backend to integrate payment features in all sorts of apps, such as Slack. Now let’s hope the startup will release an API soon and expand to other European countries.