In early 2018, Founder Philip Belamant started Zilch with an ambitiousvision to revolutionize the payments industry, specifically within the “BuyNow, Pay Later” (BNPL) space. BNPL allows consumers to spread payments foronline purchases over a period of time. E-commerce sites will often providethis on their checkout page, as payment option available to online shoppers.
Philip knew that launching Zilch wouldn’t be easy. They’d be going upagainst Klarna, Europe’s largest private fintech company, with $627 million intotal operating revenue in 2018. As a UK-based company, Zilch also had tocomply with strict EU regulations to protect consumer data and privacy.
Drawing insights from industry trends, it was clear to Philip and theZilch team that there was a massive opportunity to build a competitive BNPLproduct in the payments industry. By leveraging his own experience buildingfinance startups, and focusing on building a product that served the uniqueneeds of UK consumers, Philip had the edge that he needed.
However, Philip faced one major challenge in launching Zilch. He needed to figure out who was going to build it, and how.
What followed was a round of discovery workshops, in which CodeMonk identified user needs and charted a detailed plan to put together the right product team for their MVP. Flexible dev teams were sourced for the project, with the team scaling from one dev, and remotely adding additional developer talent as needed.
One month later, CodeMonk not only delivered the MVP, but continued to allocate and scale teams for Zilch. These elastic teams allowed Zilch to iterate on core aspects of the product, fast-forward along their product roadmap and, ultimately, grow the company.
Since launching their app in 2018,Zilch has become a unicorn in the fintech space, securing numerous rounds of funding (attracting investors such as Goldman Sachs and DMG Ventures), and continuing to grow at an ever-increasing rate.
To this day, CodeMonk has been a key partner as Zilch continues to scale.