Philip Belamant

When Philip landed in London in 2015, he ran headlong into a problem many immigrants face: no local credit history. Despite having built and run fintech businesses in Africa, he found himself locked out of mainstream credit products. That frustration became the seed for Zilch, a payments network designed to make credit fairer and more transparent.

Philip co-founded Zilch in 2018 with a bold thesis: consumer credit could be re-engineered to work for people, not against them. By merging the best of open banking with card networks, Zilch introduced what it calls the Ad-Subsidised Payments Network, a model that enables consumers to pay over time without the hidden charges that had plagued buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) products. Within just 14 months of launch, Zilch reached unicorn status, making it one of Europe’s fastest fintechs to hit a $2bn valuation. Today, it has more than 3.5 million customers and has processed billions in transactions.

Philip was born and raised in South Africa. His father was an engineer who helped develop one of the first biometric systems for government use, sparking Philip’s early interest in technology and problem-solving. He studied information technology at Rand Afrikaans University (now the University of Johannesburg), graduating cum laude with both a BSc in IT and an Honours degree . While at university, he began experimenting with mobile solutions for emerging markets, work that would shape his entrepreneurial approach.

Before moving to the UK, Philip founded fintech companies focused on mobile payments and financial inclusion in developing markets. His businesses built services ranging from pre-paid solutions to mobile wallets, reaching millions of customers across Africa and beyond. These ventures taught him how to build under constraints and exposed him to the systemic challenges of consumer finance, experiences he later applied at Zilch.

Zilch began as a simple idea: give consumers better control over payments while aligning incentives between merchants and customers. Philip’s team spent two years working with the Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) regulatory sandbox to design a model that could offer flexibility without debt traps. By embedding responsible credit checks and real-time affordability assessments, Zilch positioned itself as a safer alternative in the BNPL space. He has described the goal as building a product that leaves customers better off every time they use it.

Under Philip’s leadership, Zilch has raised over $400m in equity and debt from backers including Goldman Sachs Asset Management, DMG Ventures, and M&F Fund. In 2023, the company secured a landmark £250m securitisation deal, one of the first of its kind for a UK fintech. Zilch’s ability to attract institutional capital while scaling responsibly has made it one of the most closely watched players in the payments space.

Philip’s work has been recognised across the UK fintech landscape. He has been named a regional winner of EY Entrepreneur of the Year and won the Great British Entrepreneur Award for fintech in 2021. Zilch itself has been featured in The Sunday Times’ Tech Track lists and cited as one of Europe’s fastest-growing fintechs.

Much of Philip’s philosophy stems from his early encounters with financial exclusion. In South Africa, he witnessed first-hand how the unbanked struggled with access to basic services. In the UK, he experienced the paradox of being creditworthy abroad but invisible to domestic lenders. Zilch was born from those gaps, an attempt to redesign consumer finance at the infrastructure level. He has explained that if credit products are funded by advertising rather than fees, it changes the whole equation.

Philip is a regular speaker at industry events, including Money20/20 and FinTech Week, where he contributes to debates on the future of payments and consumer protection . He has also appeared on Bloomberg and CNBC to discuss fintech regulation and innovation . While he does not publicise personal philanthropy, much of Zilch’s mission is framed around social impact, reducing the cost of credit and giving consumers more control.