Zopa Launches First Point-of-Sale Partnership

The first of Zopa’s point-of-sale partnerships is now live.

Leading consumer lending platform Zopa has announced a tie-up with UNSHACKLED.com – an online “one-stop shop” for mobile phones. Zopa becomes the website’s first financing partner. The platform will make 24 month loans available to consumers who choose to finance their phones rather than paying the full amount up-front. Rates for UNSHACKLED.com customers will begin at 9% APR and will be determined by Zopa’s risk assessment engine. UNSHACKLED.com offers every phone on the market by separating the tariff from the phone purchase.

Last week saw Zopa launch a new product in the form of Car ReFi loans – which are powered by the company’s newly-minted partnership API. UNSHACKLED.com becomes the first third-party website to integrate the API, giving its customers access to personalised quotes within seconds. Zopa has teamed up with other retail companies in the past – like energy technology company Flowgroup – but this is the platform’s inaugural point-of-sale financing partnership. The partnership API is said to be in beta testing with a number of consumer finance partners.

Jaidev Janardana, CEO of Zopa, commented:

“With the majority of consumers getting a bad deal on their mobile phone, partnering with UNSHACKLED.com means we can offer consumers a better, fairer and more transparent deal in financing their phone. This is an exciting innovation from Zopa bringing together two online disruptors from the telco and fintech industries.”

“This is Zopa’s first online retail partnership and demonstrates our capabilities in providing an integrated online application process. We believe consumers have not been well served when it comes to their mobiles and we are delighted to be able to help consumers get the best deal through UNSHACKLED.com.”

Zopa is not the first to market with a peer-to-peer powered point-of-sale solution for mobile purchases. Rival consumer lender RateSetter has been financing handset purchases via giffgaff since November 2013.

The partnership API stands to be an important building block for Zopa. Mr. Janardana, who assumed the role of CEO in September last year, identified point-of-sale as an important channel for the platform, in an interview with AltFi. He talked then about using technology to “maximise efficiency” in point-of-sale transactions. We anticipate a number of partnership announcements from Zopa over the next few months.