REX: Lemon Way Grows Exponentially

Photo credits: Lemon Way

FACTS

• The French FinTech Lemon Way focusing on securing payments for marketplaces, keeps making progress in Europe. They just reported strong increases in both business volume and user accounts.

• For 2018, they claim more than 1.7 million new user accounts (+43% year-over-year), and expect they will achieve the 2 million accounts milestone in 2019.
• Over the same period, Lemon Way handled a volume of €1.9 billion (vs 1.4 billion in 2017: +37%). They now target €3.2 billion in transactions for 2019.
• Goal: Lemon Way further aims for key accounts and intends to become one of the top 3 payment providers in Europe.
• How? In order to achieve this goal, they plan to:
  • Expand their business on additional markets including the UK and Germany
  • Increase their workforce and strengthen their boar committee
  • Launch innovative fraud prevention and AI-centred products and solutions.

CHALLENGES

• Pioneering on a promising market. Lemon Way stands out as a leader in France, as well as in Spain and in Italy. They will rely on these achievements to make progress in dealing with payments’ management and further grow in the years to come.
• Complying with regulatory requirements. Lemon Way’s main challenge is to prove their ability to replace existing solutions with a single API, reduce costs and workload, while also improving customer experience and speed of customer service. All this with full EU and UK regulatory compliance in mind. According to Lemon Way, the UK market would be 10 times the size of the French market.

Lemon Way: Key Figures

• 70 employees from 14 different nationalities
• Used by +1,400 websites incl. 200 financing platforms
• 5.7M accounts opened in Europe since 2012.
• “Financial passport” in 29 countries

MARKET PERSPECTIVE

• Lemon Way raised €10 million in July 2018 and relied on this funding round to fuel their expansion. At the time, the Paris-based start-up also confirmed several contracts involving new market segments including the official French football organisation and the French Football Federation.
• A short while ago, their main rival, MangoPay (Leetchi) claimed more than 2,500 BtoB customers in 22 countries. In France, Lemon Way settled in a crowded industry where, in addition to MangoPay, they also face competition from HiPay or S-Money.