A view of Lagos's Computer Village market. [PHOTO: Bloomberg]

Fintech firm  Zilla is setting sights on millennial shoppers in a bid to win over more clients to its  Buy Now Pay Later platform, which already has 30,000 people on its sign-up list over 10 months after operations started .

The start-up links buyers of consumer goods to merchants in Nigeria, and steps in at the point of sale to fund the balance after the customer has made a part payment of 25 per cent, the company told PREMIUM TIMES by email.

Customers of this hue, who are often not financially enabled to make outright purchase, repay the credit to Zilla in four equal instalments at no interest over eight weeks.

Consumer inflation in Africa’s largest economy has been implacable for months, touching its high in over five years in June, according to figures issued by the statistics office Friday.

That has reduced the disposable income of many middle-income households, a reason to make consumers warm up to digital banks promising interest-free loans to meet urgent needs.

From Silicon Valley-based Class 5 Global, the firm last September raised $300,000 in pre-seed funding  to provide soft loans to finance purchase of anything from electronics, gifts, beauty & skincare products and fashion accessories, to services like travel and healthcare .

Those who have enrolled are each eligible for N300,000 credit at most.

Its mobile apps for android and iOS have hit the market and are aimed at making connection between users wanting to procure goods and over 4,000 merchants more seamless.

Zilla is betting on its business model to provide a quicker and a formidable alternative for shoppers unwilling to face the formalities and rigours of getting credit cards.

Of the $1.4 billion raised for Nigeria, the start-up capital of Africa, last year, 63 per cent went to fintechs, where unicorns like Flutterwave, OPay, Interswitch and Andela are among the sector leaders.

Private equity firms from San Francisco, California are flocking to Nigeria to chase tech companies with the potential to scale and which can leverage internet of things to spur growth among a digital-enabled youth population.

The UN expects the country’s population to eclipse that of the US by 2050, when it is projected to be the world’s third most populous nation, a trend venture capitalists count among potential that could be harnessed to drive penetration.

Tolu Abiodun, a web developer and visual designer, and Chibuike Maduekwe, a software engineer, founded Zilla. They are the company’s chief executive officer and the chief technology officer respectively.

Editor’s Note: Zilla’s payback period is eight — not six — weeks as earlier stated in this report. Also, it has two co-founders: Tolu Abiodun and Chibuike Madukwe.

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All content is Copyrighted © 2022 The Premium Times, Nigeria