Zopa
“Can a digital bank turn its consumer lending scale into the dominant embedded finance and merchant checkout platform in the UK?”
Founded2005
HQLondon, England, United Kingdom
Latest roundVenture - Series Unknown
IndustryFintech / Neobank
The story
Founded in 2005 as the world's first peer-to-peer lending marketplace, Zopa pivoted away from P2P entirely in 2021 after securing a UK banking licence in 2020, repositioning as a full-service digital bank offering personal loans, savings accounts, and credit cards. From 2023 onward, Zopa began an aggressive embedded finance push — acquiring DivideBuy to enter point-of-sale and BNPL lending for merchants, then acquiring Rvvup in 2025 to add AI-powered payments infrastructure, transforming from a consumer lender into a merchant-facing embedded finance platform combining lending, payments, and checkout.
Product timeline
2005
Zopa launched as the world's first peer-to-peer lending platform in the UK.· lending
2020
Zopa received its full UK banking licence and launched Zopa Bank, offering savings accounts and credit cards.· banking
2021
Zopa wound down its P2P lending platform to focus entirely on its digital bank.· pivot
2023
Zopa acquired DivideBuy's point-of-sale finance technology and lending platform to enter BNPL/embedded lending.· acquisition
2025
Zopa acquired Rvvup Ltd., a next-generation AI-powered payments platform, to build a unified merchant checkout experience.· acquisition
Regulated entities
1
regulatory licence held by Zopa
Licence types, jurisdictions and registered entities are in the Embedded Finance Index report.
The stack
5 layers disclosed in Zopa’s embedded-finance stack
Payments / PSP
Rvvup (in-house, acquired Sep 2025)
Banking / BaaS
in the full report
Card issuing
in the full report
Lending
in the full report
Accounting
in the full report
Accounting gap: minor
9 more providers across 4 layers, with confidence-scored evidence and source URLs, are in the Embedded Finance Index report.