For immediate release — 9 September 2026
Zeal raises $10M to connect offline payments with customer insight
Total funding reaches $14M as Zeal prepares to activate more than four million card machines under signed contracts with payment acquirers globally over the next 24 months.
LONDON, 9 September 2026 — 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.
The 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.”
