# Zeta (company)

Zeta is a banking software company that was founded by Bhavin Turakhia and Ramki Gaddipati in 2015. The company provides credit and debit card issuer processing, BNPL, core banking and "mobile experiences". Zeta provides its products to banks and fintechs.
The company achieved unicorn status in 2021.

## History

The company was founded in April 2015 by Bhavin Turakhia and Ramki Gaddipati. Its initial offerings were for employee tax benefits, automated cafeterias, employee gifting, and digital payments. In 2016, Bhavin Turakhia invested around $19 million into Zeta. Initially, Zeta payments were only supported by the MasterCard network, but later the company also tied up with the National Payments Corporation of India's RuPay.
In June 2017, the company invested 5–10 crore to buy a minority stake in an HR company called ZingHR.
Zeta has partnerships with IDFC Bank, Sodexo, Excelity Global, Kotak Mahindra Bank and RBL Bank. Zeta launched the first employee benefits survey in India along with Nielsen Holdings in April 2018. It also bought a minority stake in PeopleStrong in January 2018. In 2020, Zeta launched its technology platform-as-a-service in the Philippines and Vietnam with Sodexo being its first client in these countries.
In 2022, Zeta partnered with MasterCard to launch credit card issuers worldwide. In 2023, the company partnered with financial crime prevention company Featurespace to build fraud detection solutions for US credit card issuers. Zeta launched its digital credit as a service in 2024 built on the NPCI’s Credit Line on UPI (CLOU) for Indian banks. The company partnered with HDFC Bank to launch the upgraded version of the PayZapp app with CLOU offering and also launched its app-based customizable digital card range PIXEL with them. The company also partnered with Sparrow Financial in the same year to power its credit card program for non-prime customers in the US.
The company operates across several geographies in North America, the United Kingdom, Brazil, the Philippines, Italy, Spain, and Vietnam.

## Funding

In 2019, Zeta received an investment from Sodexo BRS at a valuation of $300 million and this unit also merged with Zeta’s employee benefits business.
In 2021, Zeta secured a Series C investment of $250 million from SoftBank Vision Fund 2 valuing Zeta at $1.45 billion. This is one of the largest single investments in a banking tech startup globally.
In March 2022, Zeta secured an additional $30 million from Mastercard at a valuation of $1.5 billion.

## Products
### Tachyon

Zeta Tachyon is a credit processing platform for banks that services credit card programs across issuance, core payments, BNPL loans, fraud and risk, and rewards with a suite of managed services.

#### Digital Credit as a Service

Digital Credit as a Service provides credit origination, issuance, and collections services to banks based on the National Payments Corporation of India’s (NPCI) Credit Line on Unified Payments Interface(UPI). Zeta processes 2 million transactions every day because of growth in credit on UPI products. It estimates that Credit Line on UPI could surpass $1 trillion in transaction value by 2030.

## Awards

* Zeta won the ‘Best of Show’ Award at Finovate West Digital 2020 for their product demo on Tachyon.
* It was also selected as the 'Retail Banking Fintech of the Year 2022' by the Aite-Novarica Group.
* CB Insights’ 2022 Annual Report recognized Zeta as one of the most promising fintech companies in the world.
* HDFC Bank’s PayZapp app, by Zeta, won the 'Celent Model Bank Award for Payments Innovation' in 2024 for creating a seamless user experience with enhanced security features.
* Sparrow’s card by Zeta won in the ‘Best Banking Card Product’ category at Tearsheet’s The Big Bank Theory Awards 2024.