Zilch Accelerates Growth and Halves Costs with Taktile’s Next-Generation Decision Platform

Zilch, the fintech payments innovator of the world’s first ad-subsidized payments network (ASPN), has revolutionized its underwriting infrastructure, achieving savings by reducing provider and usage costs by over half by transitioning to Taktile, a cutting-edge decisioning platform. This strategic shift not only enhances Zilch’s operational efficiency but also supports the company’s sustained growth in the highly competitive financial technology sector.

Pioneering Change in Consumer Payments

As a frontrunner in consumer payments, Zilch’s vision is to eliminate the high cost of consumer credit, for good. It empowers consumers to make purchases anywhere, anytime, without the burden of falling into revolving debt traps that cost consumers $150bn in interest and fees in just the US and UK alone. Having saved its 4m+ customers over $600m since launch in 2020 and as the first regulated credit product of its kind in the BNPL industry, Zilch’s ambitious target is to reduce that $150bn to zero, to Zilch. To continue delivering on this vision and recognizing the rapid advances in decisioning software, Zilch saw the need to modernize its credit underwriting processes to provide greater resilience, flexibility, and scalability.

The Solution: Taktile’s Transformative Platform

Under the leadership of Zilch’s Chief Risk Officer, Des Mcnamara, Chanuka Perera, Head of Credit Risk at Zilch, led the search for a platform that could align with Zilch’s ambitious growth plans. After an extensive evaluation of several automated decisioning tools, Taktile emerged as the clear choice, offering the flexibility and innovation that Zilch needed.

“Taktile’s platform has empowered our teams to take control of our automated underwriting processes, allowing us to build, test, and optimize decisions with unprecedented speed and independence,” said Chanuka Perera. “This shift has not only streamlined our operations but has also resulted in significant cost savings, freeing up resources for further innovation.”

Seamless Integration and Empowerment

The transition to Taktile was swift and seamless, with Zilch completing the migration and going live with the new system in just four weeks. Taktile’s intuitive user interface, featuring pre-built “Nodes,” enables Zilch’s subject matter experts to create and refine underwriting decisions without the need for external support or technical expertise.

Taktile’s Data Marketplace, which includes a vast library of pre-built data integrations, further simplified Zilch’s operations by providing easy access to essential data providers. This self-serve capability has empowered Zilch’s credit and risk teams to rapidly develop, test, and optimize decision flows, significantly reducing reliance on external consultants.

A Strategic Move for Long-Term Success

The impact of adopting Taktile extends beyond immediate cost savings. With a flexible, scalable platform, Zilch is now more robustly equipped to navigate the complexities of its rapidly scaling global operations and respond to evolving market demands.

“We see our partnership with Taktile as a notable driver of our success to date and one that’ll grow stronger. By reducing costs and increasing agility, we are now more prepared than ever to meet the needs of our customers and expand our reach,” added Perera.

About Zilch

Zilch’s vision is to eliminate the high cost of consumer credit. For good.

Zilch is a multi-award-winning pioneer of the world’s first direct-to-consumer, ad-subsidised payments network (ASPN). Leveraging its unique, vertically integrated, first-party-data business model, Zilch sets itself apart from the incumbent fintech industry with a profitable global revenue source, bringing unrivalled value to customers and marketers alike. Today, Zilch is revolutionising the $50 trillion advertising and payments industries by merging the very best of debit, credit, and savings.

Co-founded by Philip Belamant, Sean O’Connor, and Serge Belamant, Zilch provides millions of customers the freedom to go anywhere in the world (online or offline) and, when they pay, earn up to 5% cashback & rewards on debit payments (‘Pay Now’) or spread interest-free credit repayments over six weeks or three months. In the process, Zilch helps customers build their credit profiles with the major credit agencies. Within 44 months since its launch in 2020, Zilch amassed more than 4 million registered customers.

In September 2024, four years after its public launch in 2020, Zilch announced that in July 2024, it had achieved first-month profitability in record time while surpassing $130 million in revenue run rate, keeping pace with European fintech giants like Revolut, Starling Bank, and Monzo.

In 2023, Zilch launched its proprietary ASPN service, which allows merchants worldwide instant connection with Zilch’s first-party-data, closed-loop network of millions of high-intent customers, while offering customers personalised savings, deals, and discounts codified to their habitual daily spend.

In January 2023, Zilch struck a ground-breaking reporting agreement with the UK’s prime credit reference agencies, transforming the UK lending ecosystem by enabling all adults to build their credit records using interest-free credit rather than high-cost revolving credit products.

Since April 2020, Zilch has been regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), obtaining a consumer credit licence through the Regulatory Sandbox Programme.

Driven by innovation and a commitment to excellence, Zilch is setting new benchmarks in the industry to create a more inclusive and efficient ecosystem, empowering millions of users to budget and manage their financial lives more effectively and transparently.

For more information, visit: www.zilch.com.

About Taktile

Taktile is a next-generation decision platform that empowers subject matter experts to build, monitor, and optimize automated risk decisions across the entire customer lifecycle—from credit underwriting and onboarding & KYC/KYB to transaction monitoring and collections. With its low-code UI and best-in-class marketplace of third-party data integrations, Taktile enables credit, fraud, and risk teams to reduce reliance on engineering, adapt quickly to market changes, and ultimately drive growth while lowering operational costs.

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