• Egypt-based fintech Zeal has raised $10 million in a new funding round, bringing its total funding to $14 million. The company did not disclose the investors participating in the round.
• Founded in 2019 by Omar Ebeid and Belal Mohamed, Zeal develops software that integrates with existing payment terminals, enabling physical retailers to identify and reward customers at checkout and turn in-store transactions into customer data.
• The startup currently operates with partners across the UK and Europe, the Middle East and Latin America, and has built a pipeline covering four million payment terminals globally.
• The new capital will be used to activate this global terminal pipeline and scale Zeal’s technology, as the company expands its payment-linked loyalty, customer identification and analytics infrastructure internationally.
• Zeal previously raised $4 million in 2024 in a round led by Raed Ventures and Cur8 Capital, alongside strategic angel investors.

Press release:

Zeal, the payments technology company bringing loyalty and merchant intelligence to payment terminals, today announced a $10 million funding round, taking its total funding to $14 million.

Zeal secures $10 million for global expansionThe company is not disclosing the participants in this round.

Zeal has signed contracts with payment acquirers globally to activate its technology on more than four million card machines over the next 24 months. The funding will support that rollout, deepen integrations across payment environments and expand the tools merchants and payment providers use to understand their businesses. Zeal expects its coverage to grow as it expands its acquirer relationships, with further large enterprise announcements to follow.

The customer relationship often stops at the payment

Online commerce has built customer relationships around connected transactions, loyalty programmes and customer data platforms. In physical commerce, those connections are harder to make. A purchase can pass through a payment terminal without becoming a useful customer insight for the merchant or a clear account signal for the payment provider.

The challenge is fragmentation. Terminal manufacturers, operating environments, payment applications and acquiring platforms each have their own integration requirements. Connecting that infrastructure to a retailer’s loyalty engine or customer data workflows takes more than adding another app at the counter. It requires coordination across the payments ecosystem and a supported route from the transaction to the systems that can use it.

One product, configured around the merchant

Zeal brings loyalty into supported payment-terminal journeys. Merchants can configure stamps or points, add optional phone-number capture, or connect an existing loyalty engine. These are configurations of one Zeal loyalty product, designed to fit different merchant programmes and payment setups.

The same environment gives merchants customer insight and gives acquirers, payment service providers and ISOs a clearer view of their merchant estate. Merchant Health highlights changes in transaction volume, terminal activity, payment declines and trading inactivity so teams can investigate what has changed and decide where to focus account conversations.

“A card payment should be the start of a more useful customer relationship,” said Omar Ebeid, co-founder and CEO of Zeal. “The hard part is connecting the fragmented infrastructure behind the counter. We have spent years working across that ecosystem. With signed acquirer contracts covering more than four million card machines, this funding supports the next 24 months of activation and the next stage of Zeal’s growth.”

Why this matters now

Payment terminals are becoming software platforms as well as acceptance devices. Android-based terminal ecosystems can now support business applications alongside payments, creating a practical route to bring loyalty and customer insight into checkout. The commercial challenge is making those capabilities work across fragmented payment environments and delivering them through trusted acquirer relationships.

Merchants want loyalty that fits the way customers already pay, alongside insight they can use to improve the business. Payment providers need a proposition that supports those merchants beyond processing a transaction. The opportunity is to bring the customer experience and the account relationship into the same conversation.

Zeal’s distribution model works through payment acquirers and other payment partners. That creates a route to existing terminal estates while allowing each deployment to account for the provider’s platform, the terminal environment and the merchant’s requirements. The signed contracts establish the planned activation footprint; implementation will take place over the next 24 months.

“A useful product at checkout depends on the infrastructure underneath it,” said Belal Mohamed, co-founder and CTO of Zeal. “Our work is to connect terminal journeys, loyalty and merchant insight across different payment environments so partners can bring a consistent proposition to their merchants.”

Earlier backing and recognition

Zeal’s earlier backers include Saudi Arabia’s Raed Ventures, Pinnacle Capital and CUR8 Capital. Raed Ventures’ Raed III fund counts Saudi Venture Capital (SVC) among its investors.

Zeal was named Team of the Year at the UK FinTech Awards 2026, where co-founder and CTO Belal Mohamed was named Innovator of the Year. The company is also part of the Scale Up by Endeavor programme.