Retail payments platform Pine Labs raises $82m
$82m funding for Pine Labs
Pine Labs, India’s largest digital retail payments platform, has raised $82 million in the latest funding round led by Actis, an investor in the growth market payments sector.
The funding round also included a new investor, Altimeter Capital.
Pine Labs says it is “revolutionising” POS payments in India – “replacing the standard card-centric POS terminal with a smart, cloud-based payments platform that’s designed to reduce costs and drive revenue for retailers”. It also offers e-gift cards and a pay-by-points product that spans major card loyalty programmes.
Pine Labs currently processes 450 million transactions worth over $15 billion annually, and has facilitated more than $1 billion in consumer loan origination.
It integrates 12 credit and debit card issuing banks in India and 14 merchant acquirers on its payment platform. According to Pine, over 75,000 merchants across India’s retail, e-commerce, electronics, food and beverage, fashion, financial, pharmacy, telecom and airlines industries are now using its solutions.
All in all, it handles around15% of the country’s cashless transactions in physical retail stores, and has been deployed at approximately 300,000 payment acceptance terminals.
The company aims to reach one million payment acceptance points in India in the next three to five years, and is also now in talks with banks to launch its platform across multiple countries in Asia and the Middle East. It has already gained a foothold Malaysia, via a recent partnership with a large local bank there (signed in Q4 last year).
Pine Labs’ shareholders include Sequoia India, which first invested in 2009 and is its largest shareholder at present.
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