B2C, Case Study 3 min read
How Zilch accelerated growth and halved costs with Taktile
In the ever-evolving world of financial technology, the ability to adapt and innovate is crucial for teams to maintain sustainable product growth.
Zilch, the fintech payments innovator of the world’s first ad-subsidized payments network (ASPN), has been at the forefront of consumer payments with a vision to eliminate the high cost of consumer credit. For good.
Recently, Zilch made a significant change in its underwriting infrastructure to support its rapid growth trajectory – by switching to Taktile, the next-generation decisioning platform.
Meet Zilch: Transforming consumer payments in the UK
Zilch has created an empowering way for consumers to pay for anything, anywhere. Zilch offers consumers repayment optionality plus cashback and rewards through its unique and regulated business model, revolutionizing the $50 trillion advertising and payments industries by operating at the intersection of payments, consumer credit, and advertising.
The opportunity: Enhancing flexibility and scalability in decisioning
To meet the needs of today’s customers, decisioning needs to be resilient, adaptable, and scalable. In 2021, just a year after exiting beta mode and launching its product to market, Zilch partnered with a leading software provider to implement automated underwriting decisioning for its interest-free credit products. However, the landscape of decisioning options has since evolved rapidly.
Recognizing the advancements in decisioning software over the past few years and seeing the need for a transformative solution to support Zilch’s rapid growth, under the leadership of Zilch’s Chief Risk Officer, Des Mcnamara, Head of Credit Risk, Chanuka Perera, led Zilch’s search for a new state-of-the-art platform that could empower teams and meet the needs of over 4 million registered customers.
The innovation: Embracing a future-ready approach
After evaluating several vendors offering automated decisioning tools, Taktile stood out as the only solution capable of meeting Zilch's vision.
Taktile’s platform, comprising a simplified user interface with pre-built “Nodes”, gives the proper subject matter experts at Zilch the freedom to build, test, and optimize automated underwriting decisions regardless of their technical expertise. This includes seamlessly connecting to internal and third-party data sources and building custom rules in free-form Nodes as required. No consultants, no engineers, just the right experts and Taktile.
The outcome: Seamless integration, true empowerment, and immediate cost savings
Since transitioning to Taktile, Zilch has experienced a significant transformation in its operations. The implementation process was completed in record time—Zilch went from migration to going live on Taktile in just four weeks.
Taktile’s Data Marketplace, which houses a comprehensive library of pre-built data integrations and pre-packaged insights, enabled Zilch to effortlessly connect with the data providers they needed. And the platform’s flexible, self-serve capabilities empowered Zilch’s credit and risk teams to rapidly develop automated underwriting decision flows and conduct quick testing and optimization, all independently—eliminating the need for constant external support.
The switch to Taktile didn’t just enhance Zilch’s innovation and agility in responding to market demands—it also led to reducing the provider and usage costs to Zilch by over half.
“Taktile’s platform has empowered our teams to take control of our automated underwriting processes, allowing us to build, test, and optimize decisions with unprecedented speed and independence,” said Chanuka Perera, Head of Credit Risk at Zilch. “This shift has not only streamlined our operations but has also resulted in significant cost savings, freeing up resources for further innovation.”
Implementing Taktile was not merely a change in tools; it was a strategic move to support Zilch’s position as a leader in consumer payments. With Taktile, Zilch is even better equipped to navigate its rapid growth journey.
