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Zeal cover reading 'What is Zeal? A triple win', with three phone screens showing loyalty and merchant views

What’s Zeal? Benefits for Customers, Merchants, and Payment Providers

Discover how Zeal transforms everyday card machines into smart, loyalty-ready devices. Learn how merchants, customers, and payment providers all benefit from real-time insights, personalised rewards, and loyalty built into the card machine: no apps or QR codes needed.

Shahd Hany
Shahd Hany
Sep 16, 2024

Look around you: the world is evolving, and everything is either getting smarter or being outsmarted.

The time has finally come to put a brain in card machines, helping them make sense of every tap. This breakthrough in value-added tech creates a triple win: personalising experiences for customers, giving physical merchants customer identification and loyalty features just like e-commerce, and helping payment providers stand out by embedding a differentiated solution into their offering.

Here is what that means in practice.

What is Zeal?

Zeal is a value-added service that integrates directly into any card machine, no hardware changes needed. Once installed, the card machine becomes much more than just a checkout tool.

It can:

  1. Identify customers at the point of payment
  2. Segment them based on spend and visit history
  3. Retarget them with personalised offers
  4. Power loyalty schemes without needing separate cards or QR codes

Your card machine becomes an engagement engine, helping merchants build real relationships with in-store customers.

Customer collecting an order at a smart payment terminal
At checkout, Zeal identifies returning customers and enables personalised rewards and feedback, right through the card machine, no extra apps or cards needed.

Retaining Customers: A New Kind of Shopping Experience

Let’s face it: everyone loves to feel special.

With Zeal, customers are recognised via their transactions and instantly offered personalised rewards. Whether it’s loyalty points, cashback, or exclusive offers, the customer feels like your store knows them.

For example, a repeat visitor might receive an instant discount, right at the card machine.
No apps. No QR codes. No awkward loyalty cards. Just pure simplicity.

It’s like your store saying, “Hey, we see you, and we value you.”

Helping Merchants: Real-Time Insights with the Zeal Dashboard

Merchants using Zeal gain access to a powerful dashboard that links online and in-store data, helping them truly understand their customers.

Zeal Dashboard on a laptop
Merchants use the Zeal Dashboard to monitor performance, track transactions, and gain real-time insights into in-store customer behaviour, all from one place.

Key features:

  1. Recognise new vs returning customers
  2. Capture feedback at checkout
  3. Track card-paying transactions across branches

And for those ready to go further, Zeal’s premium dashboard adds enhanced loyalty capabilities, AI-driven insights, and deeper customer analytics.

Payment Acquirers: Differentiate Your Card Machines with Zeal

For payment acquirers, Zeal adds a new layer of value to the card machines they already supply.

It turns your card machines into smart, loyalty-ready devices, helping you offer more value to your merchants, reduce churn, and open up new business opportunities.

Our commercial, product, and engineering teams are here to support the entire integration journey. We’ve designed our APKs and APIs to make deployment fast, reliable, and fully customisable.

Want to stand out in a sea of generic card machines? This is how.

How It Works

  1. A customer taps their card and is prompted to enter their phone number.
  2. They receive an SMS inviting them to download the Zeal Loyalty App.
  3. Once signed up, they start earning rewards instantly.

No barriers, no fuss: just a frictionless way to keep customers coming back.

Four steps to join on the payment terminal: tap card, enter phone number, receive SMS, earn rewards
How customers join on the payment terminal.

Conclusion

Zeal delivers a triple win:

One payment terminal, a triple win for customers, merchants and payment providers
One payment terminal, a triple win.
  • Customers feel recognised and rewarded
  • Merchants get the tools they need to grow loyalty
  • Payment providers gain smarter card machines and stronger merchant relationships

It’s where real-time data meets real-world shopping, and everyone benefits.

Want to see Zeal in action? Contact us to book a walkthrough or request a demo.

Related reading

  • How card machines can become the ultimate customer engagement tool
  • Introducing Zeal Loyalty Link: Turn Your Card Machines into Loyalty Engines
  • 3 Benefits of Zeal for Payment Acquirers and ISVs
  • Merchant Loyalty Solution Built Into Your Card Terminal

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Zeal cover reading 'Link your card machine to a loyalty app' with the Zeal app on a phone next to a Zeal card machine showing a points balance
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Zeal-ready card machines: loyalty on the card machine you already have

  • Adyen
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  • Lloyds Cardnet
  • Viva Wallet
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Switching from another provider? Get 90 days of Zeal Premium free

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How Zeal stacks up

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  • vs Yoyo

Send in-store visits to your CDP

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Zeal is a payments technology company headquartered in London, United Kingdom.