Latest news with #PhilipBelamant
Yahoo
04-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
British fintech Zilch on hunt for overseas bid targets
Zilch, the consumer lender which has become one of Britain's fastest-growing fintech companies, has begun a search for international takeover targets as it accelerates its expansion ahead of a bumper stock market listing. Sky News understands that Zilch, which is run by co-founder Philip Belamant, is working with advisers to identify peers outside the UK which it can acquire in the coming months. The company, which is regulated in the UK and counts eBay among its investors, has amassed a customer base of more than five million people. Money latest: It is now among the UK's most valuable fintechs, making its future public market debut a hotly contested prize for stock exchanges in London, New York and elsewhere. Mr Belamant has been an active participant in talks with regulators and policymakers about reforms to London's listings regime amid growing concerns about the relative attractiveness of UK public markets. Last year, he warned that Zilch could float outside the UK without meaningful efforts to incentivise "retail investors to buy and hold British stocks". Sources close to the company said Zilch had generated more than £750m in savings on interest and fees for customers since its launch. Payments through its platform now have a gross merchandise value of more than £4bn, they added. Zilch has annual revenues of more than £150m, making it well-placed to snap up rivals which are too small to raise additional capital or list on the public markets, according to insiders. In recent months, the company has also been exploring its own private share sale to raise funding, having hired Citi to work on the mandate. Its last fundraising valued the company at about £1.5bn. Other Zilch investors include Goldman Sachs and Ventura Capital. Zilch secured authorisation from the City watchdog in 2020 and now offers customers a digital debit Visa card earning up to 5% of spending in rewards. In the same app, customers can switch to a credit card, allowing customers to spread repayments with zero interest over six weeks or three months, enabling them to build their credit record. The company differentiates itself from other Buy Now Pay Later companies because it is already regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. In total, Zilch has raised £500m in equity and debt since it was founded. The company employs more than 250 people. Zilch declined to comment on Friday.
Sky News
04-07-2025
- Business
- Sky News
British fintech Zilch on hunt for overseas bid targets
Zilch, the consumer lender which has become one of Britain's fastest-growing fintech companies, has begun a search for international takeover targets as it accelerates its expansion ahead of a bumper stock market listing. Sky News understands that Zilch, which is run by co-founder Philip Belamant, is working with advisers to identify peers outside the UK which it can acquire in the coming months. The company, which is regulated in the UK and counts eBay among its investors, has amassed a customer base of more than five million people. It is now among the UK's most valuable fintechs, making its future public market debut a hotly contested prize for stock exchanges in London, New York and elsewhere. Mr Belamant has been an active participant in talks with regulators and policymakers about reforms to London's listings regime amid growing concerns about the relative attractiveness of UK public markets. Last year, he warned that Zilch could float outside the UK without meaningful efforts to incentivise "retail investors to buy and hold British stocks". Sources close to the company said Zilch had generated more than £750m in savings on interest and fees for customers since its launch. Payments through its platform now have a gross merchandise value of more than £4bn, they added. Zilch has annual revenues of more than £150m, making it well-placed to snap up rivals which are too small to raise additional capital or list on the public markets, according to insiders. In recent months, the company has also been exploring its own private share sale to raise funding, having hired Citi to work on the mandate. Its last fundraising valued the company at about £1.5bn. Other Zilch investors include Goldman Sachs and Ventura Capital. Zilch secured authorisation from the City watchdog in 2020 and now offers customers a digital debit Visa card earning up to 5% of spending in rewards. In the same app, customers can switch to a credit card, allowing customers to spread repayments with zero interest over six weeks or three months, enabling them to build their credit record. The company differentiates itself from other Buy Now Pay Later companies because it is already regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. In total, Zilch has raised £500m in equity and debt since it was founded. The company employs more than 250 people.
Finextra
03-06-2025
- Business
- Finextra
Zilch partners Visa for physical card
London-based buy now, pay later firm Zilch is launching a physical card as part of a partnership with Visa. 0 Zilch claims that one in seven UK working adults are already customers with a virtual payment card stored in the the firm's app or in their mobile wallets. Now, the physical card opens up flexibility to millions of customers - particularly those who prefer the assurance a physical card brings. The card will work across Visa's global network that reaches over 150 million merchant locations in 200+ countries and territories. Customers will have the ability to shop anywhere in the world that Visa is accepted, online or offline with the same flexible repayment options. Available to existing customers from September, Zilch hopes the card will see the 50% of active customers who currently only use it for online shopping make the offline leap. Philip Belamant, CEO, Zilch, says: 'By partnering with Visa - a global leader in payments - we've plugged our AI-driven engine into a network that touches over 150 million merchants worldwide. This move will allow us to fully deploy our ad-enabled payments technology across both digital and physical retail, bringing measurable savings to consumers and margin efficiencies to merchants."
Metro
21-05-2025
- Business
- Metro
I spotted a major credit problem affecting millions — here's how I fixed it
A Technologist? Really? When asked what they want to be when they grow up, most kids will answer: police officer, actor, astronaut, vet. But not Zilch co-founder Philip Belamant. Even back then, he wanted to be a technologist and change the world. Impressive. I had to Google what one was. According to job site Indeed, a technologist is someone who 'uses their expertise to manage technology and solve technical problems'. This is apt, because Philip is, above all else, a problem solver. Before we meet, I listen to a number of podcasts he's guested on recently, largely to talk about how he has managed to build the UK and Europe's fastest-ever growing 'tech unicorn', a company valued at $1billion or more. Even more impressively, he grew the firm from launch to $2billion in its first 14 months. Words that come up a lot with Philip include: problem, solution, action, discipline, build, focus and trust. When boiled down to those seven words, it's perhaps not hard to see how the 40-year-old South African has achieved what he has. But there is more to him than the simple desire to solve a Rubik's Cube. Philip is driven by the sense that in solving a problem, the solution is doing some 'good for society'. In a nutshell, Zilch is an app you can buy stuff through just like a credit card, debit card or buy now, pay later, but you pay no interest on anything you borrow. None. Nada. Zilch. This is pretty wow in financial services. Companies that let you borrow money for free… said no one ever before. And yet this is Zilch's mission. In its own words, it wants to 'eliminate the high cost of consumer credit. For good.' Why, I ask? Yes, you're disrupting an industry that makes tens of billions of pounds out of British consumers each year. Yes, you're building a company worth billions. But are you doing that to solve a problem because it can be solved, or to help customers for their sake? He thinks. 'Look, no one grows up thinking, I want to disrupt financial services when I'm older, do they?' he says. 'But I've learned over my career that if I want to keep getting up in the morning to build a business, it has to be meaningful for me as well as solving a problem.' In 2006, still living in Africa, Philip started a mobile gaming company, PBel. It evolved into a business that had nothing to do with games, instead transforming the way that people bought mobile credit, or airtime, as it's known in Africa. It began in Namibia, a place where huge numbers of people lacked a bank account and relied on cash to pay for everything. This meant mobile phone users would have to travel physically to buy airtime from shops or other vendors. 'They worked all week to earn money for their families and then spent all weekend away from them to buy airtime so they could speak to them during the week,' says Philip. PBel let them purchase airtime from their phones. Problem fixed. 'When we started, I answered the phones in customer service and some of the stories we would hear really made me think, wow, this is genuinely changing people's lives.' He built that business into an international success across the whole of Africa, in the process, partnering with global outreach organisations such as the World Food Programme to use some of his influence to further improve people's access to technology. Then, in 2015, Philip and his family moved to the UK. 'It was weird for me moving here,' he says. 'In South Africa, I'd never had a problem getting credit. I was lucky. 'Then I get to the UK and I can't open a bank account because I don't have a credit history here and I can't get a credit card because I don't have a bank account. And I can't get a mobile phone contract and so on. It was the first time ever I had personally experienced that financial exclusion we had helped to solve in Africa.' More Trending It got him thinking. 'What would I do if I needed to defer the cost of purchasing something big? I'd be…' he trails off. 'It's nuts, right? And this is in a developed country – exactly the thing our technology in Africa is solving.' Five years later, Zilch was born. Zilch allows consumers to build a credit score while not paying any charges. Instead, the retailer pays for them. If the retailer is not on Zilch, the customer pays a small flat fee of one or two pounds. 'I think of it like buying on debit or deferred debit. It's just fairer,' says Philip. Again, it's the customer stories that keep him motivated. 'We had this one lady whose mother was ill, she lived in Leeds, and this lady couldn't pay the train fare in one go – it was hundreds of pounds. She used Zilch to spread the cost and she saw her mum. 'She was calling to thank us. She said without Zilch she wouldn't have been able to go and say goodbye to her mum, who sadly passed away the next week. These stories exist. It really, really matters to people that they have access to credit and it's not outrageously expensive. It's what makes it meaningful for me.' Do you have a story to share? Get in touch by emailing MetroLifestyleTeam@ View More » MORE: French Open 2025 odds: Carlos Alcaraz can fend off Jannik Sinner to successfully defend his Roland Garros crown MORE: School boys deny throwing massive seat over balcony at Westfield MORE: 'Merit's The Uniform Tinted SPF 50 is the everyday skin staple you didn't know you needed'
