M-wallet: Lemon Developing Smarter Wallet

• The US mobile money management specialist Lemon has just secured eight million dollars in Series A capital investment to provide for the development of its Smarter Wallet (in iOS, Android and Windows Phone).

• Smarter Wallet has been designed to allow for the digitalisation of all items to be generally encountered in a traditional wallet: payment cards, loyalty cards, healthcare and ID cards, or even receipts, tickets and coupons. The user simply has to snap pictures of these documents with his Smartphone to store them. This information is then saved on his Lemon account and accessible at all times upon PIN-entry.

• This information may easily be user by the customer when buying goods online for instance: once logged onto to his Lemon portal, he can directly copy and paste the required elements on the checkout page. He also benefits from Lemon’s PFM tools: tracking, labelling, transaction history, balances, etc., also available for consultation on his mobile phone.

Source: Lemon’s press release

• Given the debates that have been impacting the mobile payments sector these past times, Lemon (launched in October 2011) makes a difference with an outstanding user base, thus asserting that digital and mobile wallets do have a future. Smarter Wallet has been integrated both in its free service, Lemon Free, and in its Lemon Pro service (amounting 9.99 dollars per months, this premium offer includes advanced management features and helps companies (for instance) monitor their expenses). It has been downloaded over one million times.

• Smarter Wallet was created by Wenceslao Casares (also known to have founded Bling Nation in 2009, start-up which however had to be closed down in July 2011 due to insufficient adoption). This new wallet shows that Lemon intends to make an impress on the mobile market already mobbed by Web giants: design and manufacturing companies (see Apple’s new app Passbook) and even card schemes. This fundraising also proves that the market shows interest in this new entrant combining PFM and mobility.