Zilch amplifies AI-driven consumer lending with extended AWS partnership

Zilch, recognized as the world’s first ad-subsidised payments network, today announced an extended collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to accelerate the deployment of Artificial Intelligence (AI) across its financial services. This partnership will harness AWS’s advanced AI and Machine Learning (ML) services to revolutionize Zilch’s customer interactions and merchant partnerships.

As part of this expanded collaboration, Zilch will integrate AWS’s key AI services, including Amazon SageMaker and Amazon Bedrock. SageMaker is a fully managed service that allows for scalable building, training, and deployment of ML models, while Bedrock offers access to high-performing foundation models through a single API. These technologies will enable Zilch to enhance decision-making processes, improve data modeling accuracy, and reduce development times significantly.

Utilizing years of lending data from nearly four million customers, Zilch has developed an AI engine that now sets more precise personal affordability limits. Additionally, AI-driven fraud detection and buyer intent analysis are part of Zilch’s strategy to optimize consumer lending practices. The use of AI in tracking consumer trends and retailer popularity has already demonstrated significant advancements in operational efficiency.

Zilch’s robust data infrastructure, built on AWS, manages over half a billion customer data sets, with 80,000 new customers added monthly. This data accumulation allows Zilch to process more than 3,000 requests per second, adding approximately 5.4 terabytes of data weekly. With over 50% of Zilch’s active customers participating in open banking, the company gains unparalleled insights into spending behaviors and credit trends.

The application of AWS’s AI and ML services is projected to boost Zilch’s sales significantly in the next two years, enhance customer service, and refine lending decisions. An anticipated improvement of at least 10% in model performance is expected, highlighting the substantial commercial impacts of this technology integration.

Philip Belamant, Co-Founder and CEO of Zilch, emphasized the strategic advantage provided by their collaboration with AWS: “The combination of our large, high-quality data sets and AWS’s AI and ML services is going to give us a very tangible competitive advantage.” Tricia Troth, Head of Startups, UK and Ireland at AWS, also commented on the partnership’s potential to transform consumer lending with generative AI capabilities.

Sean Hederman, Chief Technology Officer at Zilch, remarked on the company’s technological evolution: “We’re now shifting gears up to fully unleash our upgraded AI strategy and hiring top AI talent. This will see us rapidly move beyond our current industry-leading cloud operations and into a new hyperscale data and AI-driven cloud environment.”

This strategic partnership between Zilch and AWS marks a significant milestone in the fintech industry, setting a new standard for how AI can be leveraged to enhance consumer lending and payment systems. By focusing on AI and ML innovations, Zilch is well-positioned to lead in the creation of more personalized and secure financial solutions.