Zilch Up launches to help credit invisible customers build their financial futures

Zilch is launching a new product to help people typically excluded from mainstream credit build their financial profiles.

According to the ad-subsidised payments network, ‘Zilch Up’ will create access for millions of people, providing the benefits of its zero-interest borrowing combined with the ability to improve your credit score — something that wasn’t possible on Zilch before.

Zilch aims to provide the roughly five million people in the UK categorised as ‘credit invisible’ with the tools to boost their credit score and in turn increase their credit limit.

“We need to strengthen the protections for consumers and increase access to interest-free and affordable credit — particularly now when the cost of living continues to hurt,” Zilch co-founder and CEO Philip Belamant said.

“For too long millions of people in the UK have had to struggle with limited or no access to credit due to thin and weak files. In a digital finance world, this is causing them the stress and crippling pain of funding unaffordable high-interest costs plus the danger of hard to understand late fees, merely to access credit.”

Zilch Up is starting with credit limits as low as £50 and providing customers with the option to pause credit and just see Zilch as a ‘Pay Now’ debit card.

Users will be also able to improve their credit scores by spending on interest-free credit through ‘buy now, pay later’ borrowing.

According to Zilch, it will soon be introducing financial support through credit coaching and the ability for customers to view their credit scores in the app.

“At Zilch, we aren’t waiting,” Belamant continued.

“We want to change this status quo by democratising access to interest-free and affordable credit, advancing the lives of millions of families and individuals in managing and planning their day-to-day financial health.”

In testing, the product helped more than 25,000 customers move into mainstream credit, and Belamant said Zilch “intend[s] to help many more”.