It’s no question that Buy Now, Pay Later has surged in the U.S. market. With our own expectation that the market will grow to $100 billion by 2024, it is no surprise that the UK-based provider Zilch has launched their Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) platform in the U.S. The company already has 150,000 pre-registered customers on the Mastercard network and plans to drive its BNPL offering with consumer analytics:
“Utilizing a blend of Open Banking technology combined with soft credit checks and its own proprietary behavioral data each time a customer spends allows Zilch to develop a real-time view of a consumer’s financial health. That enables Zilch to create a 360 degree picture of a customer’s affordability profile, and provide accurate, individualized spending recommendations.”
The company will also be partnering with Experian to deliver what they call a “reciprocal credit reporting relationship” which will enable customers to be rewarded for responsible financial behavior and build credit.
Zilch is another BNPL provider with a mega valuation ($2 billion from its last Series C) in a crowded market consisting of giants like Klarna, Afterpay, and Affirm. With aims to eliminate fees and late charges in addition to providing 2% cash back rewards similar to a credit card product, Zilch may be the BNPL 2.0 solution consumers are looking for in installment lending.
We’ve written extensively on the BNPL space; for more information please see our report, “Buy Now, Pay Later Gaining Scale and Disrupting the Status Quo in Lending” by Brian Riley.
Overview by Ben Danner, Research Analyst at Mercator Advisory Group
