Zilch has signed a 10-year lease on a new London headquarters at 40 Grosvenor Place in Victoria, committing £77 million over the lease term and more than doubling its current office footprint. The buy-now-pay-later and payments platform will occupy floors four and five of the building, a 33,160 sq ft space the company says can accommodate more than 400 employees. Zilch expects to relocate from its current base at 111 Buckingham Palace Road in Spring 2027.
The investment manager for the building is PATRIZIA, represented by CBRE and Knight Frank, with XIX acting for Zilch.
A platform for European ambitions
The headquarters move sits alongside a cluster of strategic commitments that have changed the shape of the business this year. Zilch has announced the proposed acquisition of Fjord Bank, a deal that is expected to complete in the first half of 2027 and which the company says will form the foundation of its European expansion. It has also entered a multi-year strategic partnership with Visa and taken on a sponsorship arrangement as Arsenal FC’s official payments partner.
Cumulative customer spend on the Zilch platform has passed £8 billion across all UK regions, according to the company, and it counts six million customers on its books. Philip Belamant, co-founder and chief executive, said the new headquarters reflects “the scale of our ambition and the momentum behind our growth” and described the site as a base for attracting talent both domestically and internationally.
City Minister Lucy Rigby KC MP welcomed the announcement, describing the UK as “a fintech powerhouse” and voicing support for the sector’s continued growth.
Market and regulatory context
The Fjord Bank acquisition, once completed, would give Zilch a European banking licence and materially alter its regulatory footprint. For a BNPL provider that has operated largely under consumer-credit exemptions, holding a licensed deposit-taking entity in Europe carries both an opportunity and a compliance cost: greater product range and cross-border reach, but also capital requirements, prudential reporting obligations and exposure to the evolving Consumer Credit Directive framework across EU member states.
The broader BNPL sector has been navigating tightening oversight on both sides of the Channel. In the UK, the Treasury’s long-running consultation on bringing BNPL within the FCA regulatory perimeter has yet to conclude in final rules, though industry participants have been preparing for credit-authorisation requirements for several years. A banking licence acquired through Fjord Bank could allow Zilch to pre-empt some of that regulatory uncertainty by operating within an already-licenced structure.
Competitively, the move mirrors a pattern seen among better-capitalised BNPL players globally: consolidation upward into banking infrastructure rather than remaining as a merchant-facing credit layer. Klarna‘s pursuit of a public listing and Affirm’s continued push into debit and banking products reflect the same structural logic. Zilch’s Visa partnership adds an acceptance-network dimension that standalone BNPL products lack, potentially supporting the “intelligent payments platform” positioning the company has adopted as a framing that goes beyond instalment credit.
The Victoria headquarters lease is a long-duration fixed commitment, which signals confidence in the London talent market and the company’s trajectory. The proof of that conviction will come when the Fjord Bank deal closes and Zilch moves to convert the European banking licence into live product revenue.
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