Zeal
Also a provider — view Zeal’s profile →“Can a workforce-native payroll infrastructure company become the default embedded pay layer for staffing, marketplaces, and EOR/PEOs?”
Founded2019
HQSan Francisco, CA
FoundersKirti Shenoy, Pranab Krishnan
Total raised~$29.6M
Latest roundSeries B, 2023 ($15M)
IndustryInfrastructure / Payroll
The story
Founded 2019 as Puzzl, a gig-economy payments startup. When regulation forced Puzzl to reclassify thousands of 1099 contractors as W-2 employees, the founders couldn't find payroll infrastructure that could handle high-volume, dynamic pay — so they built it themselves and pivoted the company to become embedded payroll infrastructure under the Zeal brand. Today Zeal targets workforce platforms (staffing marketplaces, EOR/PEOs, on-demand labor) with an Onboard/Pay/Bill stack, monetizing worker payments via paycards, digital wallets, and instant pay.
Last 12 months
—
Product timeline
2018
Founded as Puzzl, a payments startup for the gig economy· pivot
2019
Accepted into Y Combinator S19; pivoted to embedded payroll after reclassifying 1099 contractors as W-2· pivot
2020
$1.6M seed round· banking
2021
$13M Series A led by Spark Capital· banking
2023
$15M Series B led by Portage· banking
2024
Launched Paycards & Digital Wallets with Bangor Savings Bank· card
2026
Expanded to Onboard/Pay/Bill product suite for workforce platforms· banking
Regulated entities
1
regulatory licence held by Zeal
Licence types, jurisdictions and registered entities are in the Embedded Finance Index report.
The stack
8 layers disclosed in Zeal’s embedded-finance stack
Payments / PSP
Money movement
in the full report
Banking / BaaS
in the full report
Card issuing
in the full report
Card network
in the full report
Payroll
in the full report
Sponsor bank
in the full report
Accounting
in the full report
Accounting gap: minor
16 more providers across 7 layers, with confidence-scored evidence and source URLs, are in the Embedded Finance Index report.