Pine Labs, which started its journey in India, offers cloud-connected point-of-sale terminals, invoicing tools, working capital and other merchant-focused fintech services. Its terminals integrate with over two dozen banks and technology partners and the company processes tens of billions of payment transactions. Over the last 18 months the firm says it has scaled its prepaid issuing stack, online payments and its Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) offering and is expanding BNPL across larger Asian markets. Early backers include Sequoia Capital India, Temasek, PayPal and Mastercard. Pine Labs recently raised additional capital as it begins to explore the public markets and is planning an IPO within two years. The company has engaged Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs to advise on a potential listing. Pine Labs offers cloud-connected point-of-sale terminals, invoicing tools and working capital to hundreds of thousands of merchants. Its terminals integrate with over two dozen banks and financial and technology partners, which the company says differentiates it from rivals. Pine Labs processes tens of billions of payment transactions and reported nearly 100% growth in in-month merchant partnerships over the last year. The company has expanded via acquisitions, buying QwikCilver in 2019 and Southeast Asian startup Fave this year for $45 million; Fave reaches over 6 million consumers across more than 40,000 merchant establishments. Pine Labs has said it plans to explore public markets within two years and the CEO has stated an intent to take the company public in 18 months. The startup counts Sequoia Capital India, Temasek, PayPal and Mastercard among its early backers. Pine Labs provides payment solutions and merchant commerce services, including a PayLater product that the CEO says is seeing strong uptake. The company serves over 150,000 merchants in 3,700 cities across Asia and West Asia. It has been acquisitive—buying QwikCilver last year and making a strategic investment in SEA fintech Fave in July 2020. Past financings cited include Actis Advisors (which provided additional capital for the QwikCilver deal and initially invested $82 million in 2018) and a $125 million investment from Temasek and PayPal a few months earlier. The firm entered the unicorn club after a January investment from Mastercard, and the new round from Lone Pine Capital pushes its valuation to more than $2 billion (Rs 14,740 crore). Pine Labs was founded in 1998 by Rajul Garg; Lokvir Kapoor later took over and is the company’s chairman. Pine Labs operates a cloud-based merchant commerce platform offering payment acceptance and a broad set of merchant commerce services. Its stored-value platform includes issuing, processing and distributing digital gift cards for corporate customers. The company works closely with financial institutions and partners who design and deliver instalment financing services to merchants and consumers. Pine Labs' customer base includes large, mid-sized and small merchants across India, Southeast Asia and the Middle East. It processes roughly US$30 billion in payments annually and serves some 140,000 merchants across about 450,000 network points. Through the Mastercard collaboration it aims to expand omnichannel card- and real-time-payments-based instalment financing at checkout, both in-store and online. Pine Labs makes a smart, cloud-connected point-of-sale device supporting debit and credit cards, mobile wallets and India’s UPI, and sells merchant services including customer analytics, a transaction dashboard and loan services. The company counts clients such as Croma, Nike, McDonald’s, Apple, KFC, Sony and Samsung. Pine Labs reports an annualized transaction volume of $15 billion through roughly 300,000 payment points and says it is on track to originate over $1 billion of instant loans at POS this fiscal year. The business has been expanding its product and geographic reach under CEO Vicky Bindra, who was appointed in April to pursue international expansion and new services for consumers and banks. The new capital will be used to support that international expansion and expansion of services.

Total raised

$907M

Funding rounds

6

Latest round

Equity

Latest activity

Sep 2021