Zopa partners with Octopus Energy to enter the UK’s renewable energy market
Climate change and high energy bills have increasingly encouraged people to turn to solar energy as a cheap, renewable source of electricity, creating rapid growth in the sector.
As a result, today, some 1.3 million UK homes have solar panels – a 4,000%+ increase since 2010.
But despite the growing consumer demand, ahead of elections, the UK’s major political parties have recently significantly scaled back their green energy commitments.
This has created a void that the private sector can fill by stepping in to support major infrastructure changes. We think the time has come to go green.
Zopa and Octopus Energy
We are responding to the growing demand for green energy by entering the UK’s £23 billion renewable energy market, making our suite of fully regulated BNPL and retail finance products available to Octopus Energy customers across the UK.
With this deal, Zopa will finance the purchase and installation of solar panels for Octopus's millions of UK customers, with the cost spread over up to 84 instalments over 7 years at a representative 9.9% APR.
Our partnership with Octopus will also enable the financing of app-controlled EV chargers, installed by Octopus engineers to fast-charge customers’ electric vehicles in complement to the more than 53,600 public charge points available across the UK.
This will supplement the government’s aims to deliver 300,000 charge points by 2030 to match rising demand.
Providing greater access to renewable energy
We are proud to be partnering with Octopus Energy to make the switch to energy sustainability more accessible for millions of UK consumers.
Not only can Brits cut their electricity costs by up to 90% by switching to solar, with Zopa they can now also spread their upfront costs over 24 to 84 months.
The energy security and prosperity of future generations are dependent on greening our economy and that requires large scale investments.
Together we are extending the reach of green energy with financial solutions that put customers first and are fully regulated, offering peace of mind.
Bringing BNPL 2.0 to life
This latest partnership comes after we launched our regulated BNPL and retail finance products in August 2023 to bring to life BNPL 2.0, an evolution of the traditional BNPL model that puts customer protection first, is responsible, and sustainable.
Our BNPL and retail finance products combine the seamless customer journeys and best-in-class digital user experience offered by traditional BNPL players alongside the ability to underwrite longer, larger loans in a way that exceeds today’s regulatory requirements.
This includes running credit checks and affordability tests for all customers and sharing data with credit checking agencies (CRAs) to avoid the accumulation of unmanageable debt and cycles of “piling borrowing on top of borrowing.”
The regulated BNPL model is good for consumers and can also scale commercially. In less than one year, as of April 2024, we grew BNPL lending to nearly £100 million - offering our products to over 500 merchants and 70,000 customers.
These achievements sit alongside our wider recent accomplishments, including reporting our first full year of profitability and achieving more than 1.2 million customers.
