Yapily and Zilch Partner on Affordable Credit Solutions in UK

Yapily and Zilch have teamed up to provide affordable credit solutions to British consumers.

With this new partnership, Yapily’s open banking platform will be leveraged to support the credit decisioning process for Zilch’s buy now, pay later (BNPL) offerings, Yapily said in a Wednesday (March 8) blog post.

“Over 5 million people in the U.K. have little to no credit history, greatly reducing their access to mainstream financial services,” Yapily CEO and founder Stefano Vaccino said in the post. “In times like these, it’s important that everyone has access to the credit they need, when they need it most.”

Rising food prices and monthly bills are putting pressure on Brits’ budgets, with many turning to their overdraft to meet the increased costs, according to a recent study by ClearScore.

By accessing consumers’ risk and affordability profiles via Yapily’s open banking platform, which are more accurate than those delivered via traditional assessments, Zilch will be better able to provide credit options that are tailored to each customer’s financial situation, according to the blog post.

This partnership comes on the heels of Zilch’s announcements that it will help customers build and influence their credit scores by sharing information with all prime U.K. credit referencing agencies (CRAs) and that it will collaborate with U.K. debt charity StepChange to build a smoother and quicker process for customers who are referred to it for support, the post said.

“In the context of the cost-of-living crisis, it’s never been more critical for people to have access to 0% interest responsible credit when managing cash flow,” Zilch CEO and Co-founder Philip Belamant said in the post. “That’s what this new partnership with Yapily embraces — helping Zilch to achieve by maximizing the consumer benefits of open banking technology.”

Access to credit and the cost of using it was a core consideration in Zilch’s formation when the team look at short- to long-term credit debt figures and saw a greater opportunity, Belamant told PYMNTS in an interview posted in August 2022.

“When we set out, we said to ourselves, [there’s] a $1 trillion problem across the U.S. and the U.K., and that is called credit,” Belamant said at the time. “It’s debt. And [customers are] paying about $140 billion a year in fees and interest to credit card companies to service their debt.”