Zilch Signs £77M Lease for London HQ Ahead of Fjord Bank Acquisition

The buy-now-pay-later and payments platform has committed £77 million over 10 years for office space at 40 Grosvenor Place in London. The company will take two full floors — 33,160 square feet — designed to house more than 400 staff. The new site is more than twice the size of Zilch's current base at 111 Buckingham Palace Road.

Zilch expects to complete the move in spring 2027. PATRIZIA is the building's investment manager, with CBRE and Knight Frank representing the landlord. XIX advised Zilch on the lease.

The headquarters announcement follows several strategic moves this year. Zilch is in the process of acquiring Fjord Bank, a transaction expected to close in the first half of 2027. The deal is intended to serve as the cornerstone of the company's European rollout.

Other recent partnerships include a multi-year arrangement with Visa and a sponsorship deal with Arsenal FC as the club's official payments partner. The company reports that customer spending on its platform has surpassed £8 billion across the UK, and it now serves six million customers.

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 domestically and internationally. City Minister Lucy Rigby KC MP welcomed the announcement, calling the UK "a fintech powerhouse" and voicing support for the sector's continued expansion.

Once the Fjord Bank transaction closes, Zilch will hold a European banking licence — a significant shift in its regulatory standing. The buy-now-pay-later sector has largely operated under consumer-credit exemptions; holding a licenced deposit-taking institution in Europe brings broader product capabilities and cross-border reach, but also capital requirements, prudential reporting obligations, and exposure to the evolving Consumer Credit Directive framework across EU member states.

In the UK, the Treasury's long-running consultation on bringing BNPL within FCA regulatory oversight has yet to produce final rules, though industry participants have been preparing for credit-authorisation requirements for several years. Acquiring a banking licence through Fjord Bank could allow Zilch to pre-empt some of that regulatory uncertainty by operating inside an already-licenced structure.

The move follows a broader industry pattern in which well-capitalised BNPL providers consolidate upward into banking infrastructure rather than remaining as merchant-facing credit layers. Klarna's pursuit of a public listing and Affirm's continued push into debit and banking products reflect the same structural logic.

Zilch's partnership with Visa 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 extends beyond instalment credit.

The 10-year Victoria headquarters lease is a fixed, long-duration commitment, signalling confidence in the London talent market and the company's growth trajectory. The test of that confidence will come when the Fjord Bank deal completes and Zilch begins converting the European banking licence into live product revenue.