ZEN.COM has grown from a payment gateway serving e-commerce businesses in Central and Eastern Europe to a global platform operating across 32 markets, with more than 1.5 million individual customers and 10,000 business clients. The company’s 2024 UK license marked more than a regulatory milestone — it signaled a deliberate push into one of the world’s most competitive fintech arenas. We spoke with Michał Bogusławski, CEO Europe at ZEN.COM, about why the UK was the next logical step, what sets the company apart from Stripe, Adyen, and Revolut, and where the platform is heading.
Entering The UK: A Strategic Move, Not A Side Quest
Q: The UK is a crowded market. Revolut launched there. Stripe is dominant. What made you decide it was worth it?
A: The UK is not crowded — it’s active. There’s a difference. A crowded market means saturation. An active one means appetite. British consumers and businesses have a strong appetite for payment tools that actually work in their favor, and that gap is precisely where ZEN.COM fits. We secured our UK license in 2024 after building a solid foundation in Europe. Our revenues went from €8.7 million in 2021 to €93.9 million in 2024, and we crossed €115 million in 2025. The business had the scale and the structural maturity to enter the UK properly, not speculatively.
Q: What does “properly” mean in this context?
A: We joined the Payments Association, one of the UK’s most influential industry bodies, to build relationships with the right players in the ecosystem before we made noise about the product. Reputation and regulatory trust are not optional extras in payments — they’re the prerequisite. We earn those before we earn customers. A global company is one that feels at home in every market. That is our goal.
Q: How does ZEN.COM differentiate in the UK specifically?
A: Most providers hand businesses a gateway and say, “Good luck.” ZEN.COM brings them into an ecosystem. What that means practically: businesses using our payment gateway can accept payments globally across more than 20 local methods, offer customers instant cashback, and tap into multi-currency capabilities that support 35 currencies. The business doesn’t just process a transaction — it creates a reason for the customer to come back. That’s the distinction. Other platforms optimize transactions. We optimize the relationship between buyer and seller.
What The Ecosystem Actually Means
Q: You use the word “ecosystem” often. What does it mean in concrete terms?
A: Two sides. One platform. On the consumer side, we offer a multi-currency account, ZEN cards — backed by both Visa and Mastercard, which we’re principal members of — instant cashback, purchase protection through ZEN Care, and competitive exchange rates. On the business side, we provide a payment gateway with global reach, higher conversion rates, and tools that reduce customer acquisition and retention costs.
The two sides reinforce each other. More consumers attract more business partners. More business partners bring better deals and broader cashback coverage back to consumers. Since our launch in 2020, we’ve issued over one million payment cards and processed billions in transaction volume. That’s not a coincidence — it’s a network effect working exactly as planned.
Q: Where do cashback and ZEN Care fit strategically?
A: They turn payments into something people want to use rather than simply have to use. When you pay with a ZEN card at one of our 700-plus partner merchants — including Amazon — you can receive cashback credited to your account immediately. ZEN Care protects purchases when products fail to meet expectations or fraud occurs. These aren’t marketing gimmicks. They’re the answer to a real problem: traditional payment providers treat every transaction as a cost to be minimized. We treat it as a value event to be maximized — for both sides.
The Bigger Vision: Payments As A Growth Engine
Q: ZEN.COM has set a target of a 10x increase in customer growth over the next five years. That’s an enormous target. Is it realistic?
A: Ambitious targets clarify priorities. We have 1.5 million individual customers today. Card transaction volumes in December 2025 were twice what they were at the start of that year. Markets like Lithuania, Romania, Spain, and France are growing fast. The UK is early-stage but moving. Singapore is ramping up its first e-commerce payment clients in Q2 2026. Hong Kong is next as an Asian hub. The trajectory supports the target.
What gives us confidence is not just the numbers, but the model. Subscription plans now account for 35 to 40 percent of our active customer base, and that segment is growing faster than our overall user base. Recurring revenue from users who choose higher-tier plans for better rates, cashback, and lower fees shows that people aren’t just signing up; they’re staying. They’re staying and paying for the privilege. We don’t just process payments — we enhance them.
Q: What is the long-term ambition for ZEN.COM?
A: To make payments invisible in all the right ways — meaning they happen without friction — but deeply valuable in ways the user actually feels. Every transaction should deliver a benefit to the consumer and a growth opportunity to the merchant. The old model treated payments as a neutral pipe. We see them as a two-sided growth engine. The UK is one arena where we intend to prove that. It won’t be the last.
ZEN.COM operates across 32 markets in Europe and Asia and holds regulatory licenses in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, and Singapore.