Payments and Buy Now, Pay Later platform Zilch recently launched in the U.S.  The startup offers a virtual Mastercard that lets users split up payments into four installments 
over the course of six weeks, with no interest fees or late charges.  Zilch’s arrival in the U.S. comes after the startup grew to over two million customers in the 18 months since it launched in the U.K.  The company is launching in the U.S. with over 150,000 pre- registered customers and a new headquarters in Miami.  Philip Belamant, CEO of Zilch, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.

Closing Bell

Buy Now, Pay Later Platform Zilch Launches in the U.S.

Buy Now pay later platform Zilch coming to the U. S. The start of making that announcement this week after launching in the U. K. A year and a half ago, Zilch offers a virtual Mastercard that lets users split up payments into four installments Over the course of six weeks with no interest fees or late charges. Well now the startup is launching in the US with more than 100 and 50,000 preregistered customers in the new headquarters in Miami. So joining me now is the ceo of Philip Belmont Philip, thanks so much for coming on the show. I know your company offering a new kind of Buy Now Pay Later platform which has become very popular here in the US tell me what exactly separates your company from the rest. Nice to see you kristen. Well really what we're seeing at the moment is we spend a great deal of time looking at the market and you know you were just mentioning right now everything's kind of stocks are down and everything else is up, right if you think about gas, you know grocery, electric, everything is up right now. And you know we're just having a long conversation with with you know the mayor yesterday when we did our launch out of our headquarters here in Miami And we were saying that if you looked at groceries just last week it may have cost you $200 and you know these days it's costing you $300 plus some change Gas could have cost you $60, it's not costing you over 90. Um and that's just happened in the last two weeks. So really at this period of time we think there is really no better point in time and then for us right now to enter the market and change the status quo. Americans paid over $120 billion dollars to credit card companies last year just in fees and interest. And so really what's different about Zilch is that we're so much bigger than buying our pay later. You mentioned buying our payload. A lot of people talk about it and buy now pay later. Some of these firms actually we love and know really did a great job of iterating point of sale finance. You know they really do lend money to customers at checkout pages and that's really cool and they've done a great job there. What we're doing at Zilch which is we're all about the customer. So the person who's actually using our service and what we do is we take a 360 degree view of this customer. Their affordability on each and every transaction. And we drive customers to stores and then enable them to pay and to afford the products and services that they want. And this is fundamentally different from what you've seen before in other companies you mentioned in B. N. P. L. And that's why we're so excited about what we're doing and why customers use us more times in a month than for instance they use amazon many stories are certainly in the past year, year and a half about how buy now pay later is becoming increasingly popular. And oftentimes people do get the plug to opt in to that very option as interest rates set to rise are set to rise quite aggressively this year, Philip what does that mean for your company and what does that mean for your customers? But what it means I believe is that just everyone's got to do better. I mean the customer really just deserves better. You know, we did a huge survey here stateside and we spoke to thousands of potential customers in the market through a yougov survey. And interestingly enough, you know what we discovered is that customers were not phoning up their credit card companies and thanking them for the 20-30% interest rate, surprisingly And so um, and so really, you know, the choice is simple, you want to pay 20-30% or you want to pay nothing pays Zilch and that's effectively what we really think is required here. What we need is companies that can go and provide a transparent service that's responsible to consumers. That's putting the customer first and building revenue and driving revenue out of, for instance, the retailers or advertisers or monetizing through data, finding different ways to monetize the service but not having the customer pay for this. And what that ultimately would give is a service that customers can make use of pay zero interest anywhere they want Or at the same time pay in one, get discounts and deals and so effectively extract value with each and every time they tap and pay or they go and transact online. And so really that's what we think is needed here is a very responsible, clear message to the customer. zero confusion. This is how it works and this is why it's unique and interesting to you as a customer and will help you manage your cash flow. I really like the name Zilch right there there is a ring. Um and certainly a zing to that Philip. We've got to leave it there. Come back on the show. It'll be interesting to follow your company. We appreciate the time and congratulations on the move here to the U. S. That's Phillip Belmonte Ceo at Zilch.