Zilch, assessed on where the cost actually sits
A product sold on 'no late fees' and 'no hidden charges' carries a 14.9% representative APR and £11.50 of fees on its own £1,000 example. Assessed on disclosure rather than rewards.
One sentence on Zilch’s UK site does more work than anything else on it, and it is not a marketing line. It is the representative example: “14.9% APR Rep based on a total spend: £1,000 (+£11.50 fees). Total repayable: £1,011.50 paid over 6 weeks or 3 months, 1st payment £11.50, then 2 payments of £333.33 and a final payment of £333.34.”
Read that next to the two claims printed nearby — no late fees, no hidden charges — and you have the assessment in miniature. This desk grades neither rewards nor app design, only whether published material lets a customer work out what a product costs and what to do when something goes wrong. Everything below comes from the firm’s own UK site and its terms of service, as displayed at the time of writing; firms change their pages.
What is on the page
What the firm does well
The representative example is complete and arithmetically legible. Total spend, fee figure, total repayable and the exact instalment split, down to the awkward final penny. Most instalment marketing shows a monthly figure and stops.
No late fees is a real commitment, not a garnish. The late fee is this category’s characteristic cost, and it lands hardest on people already short. Removing it removes the mechanism by which a small purchase becomes a disproportionate debt.
Cost sits somewhere a customer can see it before committing. £2.99 and £4.99 a month are numbers you can multiply — a more honest place for revenue than a charge triggered by difficulty.
Product names describe the product, durations included, and two firm reference numbers appear in the footer — something specific to type into the FCA Register. What those entries permit is a question for the Register, not for us.
Where the disclosure thins out
The asterisk is doing enormous work. “No hidden charges” appears on a page that repeatedly carries “fees may apply” without saying what they are. A charge flagged by a superscript and quantified nowhere is not hidden in the fraudulent sense, and not disclosed in any sense a customer could use.
The two unpriced fees attach to the two moments of difficulty. Snooze buys four or eight extra days; Advance releases up to £100 before payday. Both target someone short this week, and both are published with the amount left off: the cost a customer cannot see falls on the customer least able to shop around.
The asterisked “No interest” and “From 14.9% APR Rep” sit on the same page. Both are true — a fee-based cost of credit still produces an APR — but a reader who has absorbed “no late fees” and “no hidden charges” may well conclude the product is free. On the firm’s own example, £11.50 leaves your account before any goods are paid for, and the cashback percentages carry far more visual weight than it does.
The complaints procedure is published, and filed where nobody browses. Section 19 of the terms of service gives a final response within 15 business days, 35 in exceptional circumstances, and six months from that response to take the matter to the Financial Ombudsman Service, whose address and telephone number are printed there. Right disclosures, wrong place: the help centre carries no complaints category, and the footer link marked Compliance leads to security certifications. With this market now inside a redress framework, nobody in difficulty should have to read a contract to find the timescales.
The free tier is narrower than free implies. On Standard, card use and reward redemption are shown as in-app only, and the physical card costs £4.99.
Pros and cons
Verdict
This assesses published material, not conduct: a firm can disclose poorly and treat customers decently, and the reverse is commoner still. Zilch sits above the category on cost of credit and below it on findability — the price of four more days is published nowhere, and the complaint route sits in the last place a worried customer would look.
Which Zilch products fall inside the FCA’s definition of deferred payment credit is a question for the firm and the Register, not this desk, and the position is still settling: the rules commenced on 15 July 2026 and the regulator’s consumer guidance was last updated on 6 August 2026. Date anything you read on this, including this.
Fin Watch is a publisher rather than an authorised firm: no permissions of our own from the Financial Conduct Authority, no assertions about anybody else’s, and nothing above that amounts to financial advice. Check a provider’s status on the Register yourself.