Lemon Wallet Acquired by LifeLock for $42.6 Million

Identity theft protection company LifeLock has acquired Lemon Inc, creator of an innovative digital wallet, for $42.6m.

Lemon Wallet launched in 2012 with the aim of “delivering the most consumer focused, secure and innovative digital wallet experience on the market”.

The app was initially designed as a backup of a physical wallet, but it went on to develop more and more useful features, with users being able access real time account balances and fraud alerts.

LifeLock launched its own new app today – LifeLock Wallet – which utilizes all of Lemon’s technology to aid users in the management and protection of their digital identity.

Back in August, Wences Casares, founder and CEO of Lemon, said he was looking into supporting bitcoin on Lemon Wallet, but this wasn’t implemented before the sale of Lemon Inc. He told CoinDesk today that the LifeLock Wallet will not integrate bitcoin as it “is not, and will not be, a transactional product”.

“It is about keeping your transactional identity handy in your phone and making it secure,” he added.

Casares, personally, is still a big believer in digital currency, though, reiterating what he said back in August: “I think bitcoin is going to do for money what TCP/IP did to information. [It is] probably the most revolutionary technology since the Internet itself.”

Speaking about today’s acquisition, LifeLock CEO Todd Davis said:

“The acquisition of Lemon dramatically expands our mobile capabilities, enabling us to launch a robust consumer wallet app in the marketplace on day one. The innovation and expertise from a mobile-first company like Lemon gives us powerful new ways to engage with current and future members.”

Lemon Wallet was downloaded more than 3.6m times, enabling users to store a digital copy of the contents of their wallets. This means users could keep a record of their credit card numbers, loyalty card details, ID card information and much more.

“At Lemon, we’ve built our business around digitizing everything in your physical wallet and making it available anywhere and anytime on your smartphone,” said Casares, adding:

“Joining forces with LifeLock makes tremendous strategic sense and provides something completely new in the market: a digital wallet combined with a way to help protect it.”

The LifeLock Wallet app

He said that now that LifeLock’s acquisition of Lemon is complete, his role is to run LifeLock’s mobile division.

LifeLock was founded in 2005 and has raised $178m in funding, with investors including Goldman Sachs and Symantec, according to Crunchbase.

Lemon received $8m in Series A funding back in June 2012. The company’s investors included Maveron, CampVentures and Lightspeed Venture Partners, which was part of a $5m funding round for bitcoin exchange BTC China last month.