For acquirers: when every rate looks the same, the terminal has to do more

One platform, three provider economics

Zeal is one value-added services layer that runs on the payment terminals a provider already owns. The economics differ by seat: acquirers use it to cut merchant churn and add a subscription revenue line, ISOs use it to watch and defend the residual portfolio, and payfacs use it to make sub-merchant onboarding an easier sell. The sections below show what each buyer actually sees.

For acquirers, the problem is churn and share of wallet. With 20-30% of merchants switching provider each year, growth gets eaten from the bottom of the book. Zeal gives your merchants services they cannot take to a rival, scores every merchant's churn risk so your team calls before the cancellation, and adds a subscription revenue line on terminals that today earn processing fees alone.

For ISOs, the problem is defending residuals across an estate you cannot fully see. The Zeal ISO portal shows real-time transactions across your whole estate in one view, regardless of which acquirer processes them, with churn-risk scores in the same screen. Your portfolio is your annuity; Zeal is how you watch it and how you make it harder to poach.

For payfacs, the problem is standing out at onboarding. Sub-merchants sign up where the offer is strongest, and a platform whose terminals include loyalty, customer identification and analytics onboards better than one selling payments alone. Zeal ships as part of your proposition from day one, not as an upsell later.

Whichever seat you sit in, the mechanics are the same: Zeal deploys remotely to the Android and Linux terminals already in the field, is live with Elavon, Worldpay, NMI and Lloyds Cardnet, and never touches your certified payment flow. Talk to sales and we will map it to your estate.

What is a value-added services layer for payment terminals?

A value-added services layer is software that runs on a payment provider's existing terminals and adds commerce services around the payment: loyalty, customer identification, branded screens, digital receipts, campaigns, estate visibility, churn prediction and a white-label merchant dashboard. Zeal is that layer. The acquirer, ISO or payfac keeps the processing relationship, the merchant gets the tools, and the terminal does more than take payment. It deploys remotely, needs no new hardware and leaves the certified payment flow unchanged.

Where Zeal does not help

Zeal does not process payments and does not replace acquiring, settlement or scheme relationships; those stay exactly where they are. It cannot rescue a merchant leaving purely on price: churn prediction buys your team time to act and services add reasons to stay, but the commercial offer is yours to fix. And because Zeal is software for payment terminals, it needs your terminals to run on: providers without an Android or Linux estate in the field have nowhere to deploy it.

Payment provider FAQs

How is Zeal priced for payment providers?

Zeal is sold to the provider, not to merchants, under one of two commercial models. The first is revenue share: Zeal goes to market inside your merchant proposition and the value-added services revenue it creates is shared between us. The second is an annual licence: a fixed yearly fee that activates Zeal across the MIDs you nominate, with predictable costs from day one. Commercials are agreed per partnership, based on estate size and the services switched on; talk to partnerships for a model built on your numbers.

How much integration work does Zeal need from a provider?

Very little, because Zeal does not touch the payment. Zeal identifies the customer when the card is presented, before the transaction; payment processes exactly as today; no recertification, no second authorisation, no added scheme fees. Redemption follows card scheme rules with one settled transaction. The software installs remotely on the Android and Linux terminals already in the field.

Who owns the customer data Zeal collects?

Customer identification is consent-based: shoppers opt in to loyalty and receipts, and profiles are created from that consent. Merchants use the data to serve their own customers, and the provider gets estate-level insight: activity, risk levels and service adoption across the portfolio. Zeal has created 95k+ customer profiles this way, and it does not sell the data on.

How quickly can a provider go live with Zeal?

Because Zeal is software for terminals a provider already operates, going live is a remote rollout rather than a hardware programme. There are no engineer visits, no terminal swaps and no recertification. Pilots typically start with a defined merchant segment, prove the numbers, then scale across the estate; the pace is set by your rollout plan, not by logistics.

Zeal is live with Elavon, Worldpay, NMI and Lloyds Cardnet, and runs across roughly 5,000 merchants. If you operate an estate and want a services layer on it, the next step is a conversation about your terminals, your merchants and your numbers.