Zilch announces the acquisition of NepFin for further scaling into the US

By Joy Dumasia

Zilch, the London-based FinTech scaleup, announced the acquisition of NepFin, a technology-enabled direct lender offering flexible capital solutions.

The acquisition follows Zilch’s recent Series B extension, which raised an additional $110 mn, bringing its total funding to more than $200 mn, which will help secure key licensing and regulatory capabilities and expand its ground team in the U.S.

Albert Periu joins as CEO of the U.S., and Thomas Meister joins as COO & General Counsel in the U.S. Stemming from their experience at NepFin and Funding Circle, Periu and Meister bring tremendous industry knowledge in building out U.S. FinTech lending businesses.

Zilch looks to scale the team considerably within the U.S. market; the focus areas include targeting sales, marketing, compliance, customer service, and engineering. Zilch is built upon responsibility, offers transparency and is the only player in the industry that uses Open Banking technology combined with soft credit checks to gain a real-time view and understand the consumer’s affordability profile and make an accurate recommendation of what they can afford, preventing problem debt.

Philip Belamant, CEO and Founder of Zilch, said: “We’ve been exploring growth options in the U.S. for some time and following the additional funding, now was the perfect time to take another meaningful step towards our U.S. launch. Albert, Tom and their team have done tremendous work and adding them to our team enable us to hit the ground running with regulation top of mind. We’re highly confident that the team will mirror and build upon the success of Zilch as we bring the most scalable BNPL product to the U.S. market.”

Recently, IBS Intelligence reported that London-based FinTech Zilch has announced that it has secured $110m of debt and equity funding from Goldman Sachs Asset Management, DMG Ventures (the venture capital arm of the Daily Mail and General Trust plc) and others.