Zeal Rewards, mobile payments & loyalty startup incubated at SETsquared UK announced the completion of an undisclosed round of Seed funding, set to back a major new phase of growth for the business.

Omar Ebeid, Bellal Mohamed, and Amr Mohamed founded Zeal in 2019. It was inspired by Apple Pay’s experience and allows users to connect a payment method to the Zeal app QR code and present it to a scanner in-store to pay and collect loyalty punches in the same transaction.

The startup is on a mission to end fragmented in-store customer experiences including unnecessary long cashier queues, wasteful loyalty programs, and poor customer identification. Retailers, food and beverage outlets and beauty salons are able to accept loyalty powered QR code and remote payments through the Zeal app. This removes the hassle of having to pay by card/cash and punch your loyalty cards in two separate steps.

Omar Ebeid, founder and CEO at Zeal said, “With financial inclusion prioritized by the Central Bank of Egypt and a population of 100mn, Zeal is bringing Egyptians a seamless and rewarding mobile payments experience. We are targeting multi-sited food and beverage outlets, beauty salons and barbershops that are serving affluent and tech-savvy consumers.”

Through Zeal, vendors receive a data analytics dashboard that tracks live spending at their branches, with the ability to forecast future customer spending using artificial intelligence. The dashboard enables vendors to view actionable insights to trigger consumer behavior, engage with customers through targeted offers, push notifications, and analyze customer data to increase their purchasing frequency and customer loyalty.”

Caroline Fleming, Centre Director at SETsquared Surrey, said, “The Zeal team has definitely shown their eagerness to tackle a global fintech and customer retention problem that every B2C enterprise faces. We look forward to their continued growth.”

Zeal will use the investment to grow its team and scale its operations in Egypt and the UK.