Stepchange Debt Charity
“Can a UK debt charity scale free, FCA-regulated debt advice and digital referral infrastructure (StepChange Direct) to become the de facto vulnerability-support layer embedded across UK consumer credit and BNPL providers?”
StepChange Debt Charity (legal name: Foundation for Credit Counselling) is the UK's leading not-for-profit debt advice charity, authorised and regulated by the FCA. It does not originate credit; instead it operates debt management plans and provides free advice, collecting regulated payments from clients and distributing them to creditors. Its embedded-finance footprint is primarily operational: accepting and redistributing client debt repayments via a payment infrastructure partner (Bottomline Technologies), and offering StepChange Direct as a digital referral widget that lenders and BNPL firms can embed to route vulnerable customers into advice journeys.