Zilch Doubles Down on Lending Muscle With £395 Million Debt Facilities

Zilch has added £165 million to its securitization and corporate debt facilities, bringing total commitments to £395 million and unlocking the capacity to originate up to £6 billion in lending annually. Deutsche Bank led the latest financing, with two major credit funds participating. The London-based payments company confirmed the deal as it pushes deeper into consumer credit beyond its original buy-now-pay-later roots.

The number that matters here is the origination ceiling. £6 billion a year in lending capacity is a serious war chest for a company founded in 2018, and it signals Zilch intends to compete for purchases — holidays, household appliances, insurance premiums — that traditional credit cards and personal loans have long owned.

What does the new money actually fund?

The short answer: bigger tickets and longer terms. In August 2026, Zilch launched Pay Monthly, a product that lets qualifying customers spread purchases over three, six or 12 months. That changes the risk profile of Zilch's book — installments stretched across a year behave differently from 30-day BNPL repayments — and securitized funding is how lenders of that kind of paper keep unit economics working.

Chief Financial Officer Hugh Courtney said the upsizing reflects funders' confidence in the model. "We are proud of our close partnerships with our funders, led by Deutsche Bank, who continue to support our growth as we scale the business profitably in the UK," Courtney said. "The upsizing of the facilities represents a strong endorsement of our underwriting capabilities, product market fit and ability to continue scaling at pace."

Management has been explicit that cheap, reliable funding is the gating factor on growth. Access to efficient funding, they argue, is what supports higher transaction volumes without squeezing margins.

How big is Zilch today?

The company's own numbers give the scale of the operation the new facilities are backing:

• £2,500 — average annual spending per active customer
• £3.5 billion-plus — gross merchandise value run rate
• $300 million-plus — annual revenue run rate, as previously announced
• Two consecutive quarters of adjusted profit before tax in its 2027 financial year

Two profitable quarters won't settle the long-running debate about BNPL economics, but it's a line few of Zilch's venture-backed peers have crossed. And the £2,500 per-customer spend figure is the more strategically loaded number: it shows users aren't just splitting the occasional sneaker purchase. They're routing meaningful household spending through the platform.

CEO and co-founder Philip Belamant framed the financing around exactly that engagement play. "As we continue to grow at significant scale, having access to efficient funding is a key parameter for success. These expanded facilities give us greater capacity to support our customers where we need them, capturing more of the transactions that matter to customers day to day and providing the most rewarding ways to pay," Belamant said. "By serving a broader range of customer needs, we can continue building a highly engaged customer relationship and delivering the value, flexibility and features that our customers really want."

A platform bet, not a product bet

Zilch's platform now bundles debit, credit, installments, earned wage access, credit-building features, offers and rewards into a single app. The strategy is straightforward: own more of each customer's payment life, from a £4 coffee to a £4,000 holiday, so that engagement compounds across product lines rather than resetting with each transaction.

The Pay Monthly push fits that logic. Everyday spending gets a customer habituated to the app; larger, longer-duration credit keeps them there. The £395 million in facilities is the balance-sheet plumbing that makes both sides of that flywheel possible.

There's a physical signal of the same ambition. Zilch plans to move into a new London headquarters in spring 2027, more than doubling its office capacity.

What does this change for the market?

For UK consumers, expect Zilch to compete harder on exactly the purchases where banks and card issuers have been the default — the installment financing of insurance premiums alone is relatively novel territory. For competitors, the message is that Zilch now has the funding depth to sustain a multi-year land grab, backed by Deutsche Bank and institutional credit funds rather than thinning venture reserves.

The test ahead is underwriting at scale. If Zilch's credit performance holds as it stretches into 12-month terms and larger tickets, the £6 billion capacity becomes a growth engine. If it doesn't, it becomes an expensive lesson — and Courtney's pledge to "scale the business profitably in the UK" will be the yardstick investors watch.