Zeal Raises $10M Series B to Scale Merchant Intelligence Across 4M+ Payment Terminals

Omar Ebeid & Belal Mohamed, Zeal co-founders

Zeal, a London-based payments technology startup founded in 2019, closed a $10 million Series B funding round, elevating its total capital raised to $14 million. This injection funds the activation of its loyalty and merchant intelligence software across a pipeline of more than 4 million point-of-sale card machines globally over the next 24 months.

Backed by Raed Ventures, Pinnacle Capital, and Cur8 Capital, Zeal’s acquirer-led distribution bypasses direct-to-merchant sales by integrating its software layer via a single SDK into existing terminal fleets. This capitalization maps directly to the macroeconomic trend of margin compression within offline physical retail and payment processing.

As transaction clearing becomes highly commoditized with near-zero margins, legacy acquirers and independent sales organizations are urgently seeking software-enabled service overlays to extract secondary revenue streams from captive merchant bases and offset stagnant transaction processing fees.

How Much Has Zeal Raised and What Will the $10 Million Fund?

Zeal has raised $10 million in 2026, bringing its total funding to $14 million. The company has not disclosed the participants in the latest round.

The new capital will support Zeal's global expansion, deeper integrations across payment environments, and the rollout of its technology across more than 4 million card machines over the next 24 months.

The company distributes its technology through payment acquirers and other payment partners, giving it access to existing terminal estates rather than requiring merchants to replace their payment infrastructure.

Zeal expects its coverage to increase as it expands its acquirer relationships, with further enterprise announcements planned.

What Does Zeal's Expansion Pipeline Look Like?

Metric	Zeal's 2026 Position
Latest funding	$10M
Total funding	$14M
Planned terminal activation	4M+ card machines
Activation timeline	24 months
Company founded	2019
Core markets	UK & Europe, Middle East, Latin America

Zeal's own 2026 materials also report 30,000 merchants activated across payment providers and operations across three regions, underscoring the company's existing distribution footprint.

Why Is Zeal Targeting the Gap Between Payments and Customer Relationships?

For online commerce, transactions can be connected to loyalty programmes, customer profiles and data platforms. Physical commerce is more fragmented.

A customer can make a purchase through a payment terminal without that transaction becoming a meaningful customer insight for the merchant—or a useful account signal for the payment provider.

The problem is infrastructure.

Terminal manufacturers, operating systems, payment applications and acquiring platforms can each have different integration requirements. Connecting those systems to a retailer's loyalty programme or customer data workflow therefore requires more than installing another application at checkout.

It requires a supported path from the payment transaction to the systems that can turn that transaction into customer insight.

That is the gap Zeal is targeting.

How Does Zeal Turn Payment Terminals Into Loyalty and Intelligence Tools?

Zeal brings loyalty and customer insight directly into supported payment-terminal journeys.

Merchants can configure the platform around their existing programmes, including:

• Stamps or points-based loyalty programmes
• Optional phone-number capture
• Connections to existing loyalty engines
• Customer insights generated from payment activity
• Merchant health monitoring for payment providers

Rather than creating multiple products for different merchant requirements, Zeal positions these capabilities as configurations of one payment-terminal platform.

The company says its technology allows every in-store transaction to become usable data for both the merchant and the payment provider serving that merchant.

What Is Zeal's Merchant Health Product Designed to Do?

The platform also extends beyond consumer loyalty.

Merchant Health gives acquirers, payment service providers and independent sales organizations greater visibility into their merchant portfolios. It highlights changes such as:

• Transaction-volume changes
• Terminal activity
• Payment declines
• Trading inactivity

These signals can help payment providers identify changes in merchant behaviour and determine where account teams should focus their attention.

This creates a second layer to Zeal's proposition: loyalty and customer engagement for merchants, combined with merchant intelligence for payment providers.

As Zeal CEO and co-founder Omar Ebeid explained, the opportunity is to make the card payment the beginning of a more useful customer relationship rather than the endpoint of a transaction.

Why Are Payment Terminals Becoming More Important for Software?

Payment terminals are increasingly becoming software-enabled devices rather than acceptance hardware alone.

Modern Android-based and smart payment environments can support business applications alongside payment functionality. This creates an opportunity to bring loyalty, customer identification and merchant analytics closer to the point of sale.

For Zeal, however, the challenge is not simply developing software for a terminal.

The larger challenge is distribution across fragmented payment infrastructure.

A solution may need to work across different terminal models, payment applications, providers and acquiring platforms. Zeal's acquirer-led model is designed to address this complexity by integrating its technology into existing payment estates.

The company says its signed contracts already establish a planned activation footprint of more than 4 million card machines, with implementation taking place over 24 months.

How Does Zeal's Acquirer-Led Model Support Global Expansion?

Instead of selling directly to every merchant, Zeal works with payment acquirers, payment service providers, ISOs and other payment partners.

This model gives Zeal a route into existing merchant networks while allowing deployments to account for each provider's technology stack and terminal environment.

The approach is particularly relevant as payment providers look for ways to differentiate beyond transaction-processing fees.

For merchants, the proposition is straightforward: loyalty can operate through the payment experience customers already use, without requiring a new app, loyalty card or additional hardware. Zeal describes its model as turning existing payment terminals into loyalty and customer-data infrastructure.

For payment providers, the potential value is broader visibility into merchant behaviour and another layer of software-enabled services around the payment relationship.

What Are Zeal's Founders Saying About the Company's Next Phase?

Omar Ebeid, Zeal's co-founder and CEO, said the company's contracts covering more than 4 million card machines provide the foundation for the next 24 months of activation and growth.

Belal Mohamed, co-founder and CTO, said the company's focus is connecting terminal journeys, loyalty and merchant insight across different payment environments so partners can deliver a consistent proposition to their merchants.

The founders' comments point to a strategy focused less on creating another standalone loyalty product and more on embedding customer intelligence into the infrastructure already used to process physical payments.

Who Has Previously Backed Zeal?

Zeal's earlier backers include Raed Ventures, Pinnacle Capital and CUR8 Capital. The company's latest round participants have not been disclosed.

Zeal has also been part of Endeavor's Scale Up programme since 2023, according to the company's newsroom.

The company's investor and programme relationships provide additional context for its expansion from payment-terminal technology into a broader merchant intelligence proposition.

What Recognition Has Zeal Received in 2026?

Zeal's expansion comes alongside recognition from the UK fintech industry.

At the UK FinTech Awards 2026, Zeal won Team of the Year, while co-founder and CTO Belal Mohamed won Innovator of the Year. The awards were held on 23 April 2026 in London.

Zeal has also previously received recognition from Juniper Research, including a Platinum Award for Payment Terminal Innovation in 2023.

What Does Zeal's $10M Raise Mean for the Payments Market?

Zeal's latest funding is significant not only because it takes the company's total funding to $14 million, but because the capital is tied to a defined enterprise distribution opportunity.

The company already has signed contracts covering 4 million+ payment terminals, giving the next 24 months a clear execution focus.

If Zeal can successfully activate that footprint, its proposition could move beyond loyalty software into a broader layer of customer intelligence embedded within physical payment infrastructure.

The underlying opportunity is to make the payment terminal more than a device that authorizes transactions: it can become a point where merchants recognize customers, build loyalty and generate actionable data, while payment providers gain deeper visibility into the businesses they serve.

For Zeal, the next stage is therefore less about proving that payment terminals can host additional software—and more about proving that this infrastructure can scale across millions of devices and multiple payment environments.