Egyptian-Founded Payments Technology Pioneer Zeal Secures $10 Million to Scale Global Terminal Infrastructure

LONDON / CAIRO — Payments technology company Zeal has successfully secured $10 million in new funding to accelerate the global expansion of its checkout infrastructure. Co-founded in 2019 by Omar Ebeid and Bellal Mohamed, the firm develops software that integrates directly with existing physical payment terminals, bridging the structural gap between traditional retail transactions and digital customer analytics.

The latest injection brings Zeal's total capital raised to $14 million, following a prior $4 million round in 2024. While the specific investors for the current round remain undisclosed, previous institutional backers include Raed Ventures, Pinnacle Capital, and CUR8 Capital.

Global Rollout and Terminal Activation Pipeline

With signed acquirer contracts already covering an expansive global footprint of more than four million payment terminals, Zeal will deploy the proceeds to execute its multi-year activation roadmap across the UK, Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America.

The platform is engineered to transform standard card processing hardware into versatile software-enabled environments. By embedding customizable loyalty programs, such as points, stamps, and automated customer identification, directly into the checkout flow, physical retailers gain data-driven insights historically reserved for e-commerce operators. Additionally, Zeal offers specialized "Merchant Health" tools that provide payment acquirers and service providers with granular visibility into terminal activity, transaction trends, and account performance.

"A card payment should be the start of a more useful customer relationship," noted Omar Ebeid, Co-Founder and CEO of Zeal. "The hard part is connecting the fragmented infrastructure behind the counter. 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."

As modern POS hardware shifts toward Android-based operating systems capable of supporting third-party applications, Zeal's channel-partner distribution model positions the company to capture rising international demand for integrated merchant intelligence.

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