Zilch, a London-based Fintech, has acquired Miami-based lender Neptune Financial (NepFin) as a Buy Now, Pay Later beachhead into North America.

Zilch rides the Mastercard rails with an open-loop payment card (Zilch presently provides access to 5000+ stores).

The business model is focused on pre-purchase acquisition of the customer allowing for a seamless experience at checkout. Philip Belamant calls this an “over the top” #BNPL direct-to-consumer (D2C) model.

Zilch swims upstream in the purchase journey establishing a card relationship avoiding the competition at PoS checkout.

25% is paid upfront by the consumer and then 25% fortnightly for a 6 week period. No interest or fees if all payments are made on time.

The team have raised $80 million, an all-equity Series B that values the company at over $500 million. Funding came from Gauss Ventures and M&F Fund.

Welcome to Miami, Philip.

Deal Background

The acquisition of NepFin follows Zilch’s recent Series B extension which raised an additional $110M, bringing its total funding to more than $200M, will help secure key licensing and regulatory capabilities, as well as expand its on the ground team in the US.

NepFin’s Albert Periu will take over the reins as US CEO and Thomas Meister joins as COO & general counsel. Prior to NepFin, both Periu and Meister worked at P2P lender Funding Circle.

Philip says: “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 enables 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 US market.”