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A peer-to-peer payment app that works similarly to Venmo from startup Lydia in France now works with Apple Pay (a feature originally announced in July), making it possible to spend your balance from the app wherever MasterCard and Apple Pay are accepted.
It’s a neat use of Apple Pay to make it possible to do mobile payments without requiring that a user have a credit card – and it can work for users who have an existing physical Lydia MasterCard, which the startup launched last year to make it possible for users to quickly pay with their balance without having to wait for inbound funds to pass the SEPA transfer process.
Users of the app can either add their physical Lydia MasterCard the way you would any other credit card in the Apple Pay settings, but if you haven’t got a card you can also generate a virtual one via the Lydia app itself to provide you with a card number to use of verification during the setup process.
Apple also set live its Apple Pay Cash feature for users in the U.S., which allows users to transfer payments to each other instead of just transact with businesses and merchants. It’s not yet available in other countries, as of yet, but Lydia’s implementation of Apple Pay is an interesting alternative that takes peer-to-peer payments and makes them much more flexible in terms of broader mobile commerce use.
