Zilch has secured £100 million in debt financing in signs the London business continues to hold off on a decision to list on the London Stock Exchange.
The Victoria-based fintech, which hit a $2 billion valuation in 2021, has mooted the prospect of an IPO for several months but has so far declined to confirm whether London will be its primary listing destination.
Zilch CEO Philip Belamant told the Standard: “We need pension funds investing in British businesses – if that’s not happening you just don’t get the liquidity and then you drive that decision away.
“We think that that timeline is over the next couple of years. We are already preparing for that event – it’s just about timing and venue which we have to decide at an appropriate point in time.”
Zilch said the £100 million securitised debt financing, arranged by Deutsche Bank, will enable the company to grow its business and accelerate Zilch's ability to create and launch new products for a broader base of customers. Scores of tech firms have turned to debt financing to fuel their growth over the past year as a decline in tech valuations from their peaks in 2021 has made equity funding rounds less attractive.
In the past four years, Zilch has amassed over 4 million customers and is now processing more than 10 million monthly payments. The platform has already generated over £2.5 billion in commerce.
It comes amid signs Britain’s biggest fintechs are ramping up recruitment as the industry charts a course for major expansion.
More than three thousand job vacancies in fintech were advertised in the first three months of this year, according to data from Morgan Mckinley and VacancySoft, representing a jump of nearly two-thirds on last year, with the lion’s share of the hires taking place in London.
