The world's first ad-supported payments network, Zilch (formerly known as APN), has expanded its partnership with top cloud provider Amazon Web Services (AWS) in order to hasten the introduction of AI and ML technologies throughout its portfolio.

The news coincides with the addition of Visa to the AWS Partner Network (APN), which simplifies access to Visa's cloud-native fintech, financial institution, and corporate clientele.

In accordance with the terms of their extended agreement, Zilch will keep utilizing AWS's AI and ML technologies to revolutionize the way it supports merchants and provides customer care.

This includes Amazon Bedrock, an AWS service for creating high-performance foundation models from top AI companies via a single API, and the Amazon SageMaker service, which is a tool for creating, training, and deploying ML models at scale.

This will continue to reduce development timelines and allow Zilch to increase the quantity of data in its models while reducing build time. It will also help Zilch to make faster and more accurate judgments based on data modeling and trends.

Nothing: Growing a collaboration with AWS

In an effort to end consumer credit, Zilch, an ASPN, integrates payments and advertising to give consumers flexible payment options for both in-person and online transactions.

With thousands of retailers using its services, Zilch offers a unique buy now, pay later (BNPL) model that allows customers to make interest-free payments over a six-week period and receive sign-up clearance within the fintech's financial restrictions. This is a trend that consumers are increasingly choosing.

In fact, Zilch's AI engine—which has been trained on loan data from its over 4 million customers—allows it to set financial restrictions. With models in place to follow well-known merchants and patterns in customer demand, it can also employ AI for fraud detection and understanding buyer intent.

The AI and ML services offered by AWS enable all of these features. As an established partner, Zilch claims that because its data lake is already developed on AWS and has a substantial amount of high-quality data, it is in the greatest position to continue utilizing AWS' services.

"We're delighted that Zilch has chosen AWS to bring the transformative potential of AI and generative AI to consumer lending," says Tricia Troth, Head of Startups, AWS, UK and Ireland.

"Zilch is able to expand its offer to more consumers across the UK and into new geographies and markets, and deliver more accurate and faster lending decisions thanks to Amazon SageMaker and Amazon Bedrock."

Zero: Quick expansion since founding
Zilch has had phenomenal growth in only the last four years, producing over 500 million customer data sets through its direct-to-consumer business over that period.

In just 14 months, the fintech jumped from launch to double unicorn status, an incredible accomplishment that put it among the fastest-growing fintech businesses ever.

Zilch adds 80,000 new users each month, resulting in 5.4 terabytes of fresh data being added every week. Because half of its clientele has enrolled in open banking, the fintech is also able to provide a pool of even higher-quality data.

Zilch is certain that by growing its relationship with AWS, it will be able to enhance customer service, make better loan decisions, accelerate sales in the next two years, gain deeper insight into underwriting, and increase fraud detection visibility by at least 10% in near-term model performance.

Zilch's co-founder and CEO, Philip Belamant, continues, saying, "We have access to 15–18 times the data that our nearest competitors have since our clients utilize Zilch about 100 times a year.

Our substantial, superior data sets along with AWS's AI and ML capabilities will provide us with a clear competitive edge. AI will be used by Zilch to invest in boosting employee productivity, speeding unit economics, and adding value for our clients.