Egypt’s Zeal raises six-figure seed for its digital payments and loyalty platform

Egyptian fintech Zeal Rewards has raised a seed investment from an angel investor, it announced in a statement to MENAbytes today. The startup did not disclose the size of the investment but told us that it’s six-figure (USD). It is currently a part of SETsquared, a university incubator in the United Kingdom.

Founded in 2019 by Omar Ebeid, Bellal Mohamed, and Amr Mohamed, Zeal enables users to link different payment methods (e.g. bank debit cards – with their Zeal accounts) and then make in-store payments by presenting the app’s QR code to a scanner at the store. The scanner is provided (to merchants) by Zeal.

Every time, a user pays using Zeal at a specific outlet, they collect punches (or points) that they can then redeem for different rewards (from the same outlet). So it is basically replacing loyalty cards with its digital solution that’s built on top of a payments product.

It also enables its partner businesses to receive payments from users by sending them payment links. Its partners include restaurants, cafes, beauty salons, and barbershops. The partners can access different types of reports and insights through Zeal’s dashboard for them – that also gives them the ability to forecast future customer spending using the existing data.

“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,” said the startup in a statement.

Omar Ebeid, founder and CEO at Zeal, said, “With financial inclusion prioritized by the Central Bank of Egypt and a population of 100 million, 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.”

Zeal plans to use the investment to grow its team and scale its operations in the United Kingdom and Egypt.