Merchant platform Pine Labs acquires Qwikcilver for $100m
Actis portfolio company Pine Labs, a merchant platform company in India, has signed an agreement to acquire Bangalore-based gift card solutions provider, Qwikcilver, for $110 million, subject to closing conditions.
Both are market leaders in their respective segments in India
The transaction has been funded from the company’s cash reserves and additional funding from existing investors.
Actis is committing a further $30 million to the company increasing its total investment in Pine Labs to $90 million.
Pine Labs processes annualised payments of $20 billion. This acquisition will bring together the strengths of Pine Labs’ merchant-focused and Qwikcilver’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) technology platforms, and augment their Indian and international market reach.
Asanka Rodrigo, partner and head of South Asia at Actis says: “We see Qwikcilver as a natural, complimentary acquisition for Pine Labs, offering a further product to merchants, integrated with their billing systems and Pine Labs’ payment network. Both are market leaders in their respective segments in India and have a similar expansion strategy outside India”.”
The combined gift solutions business will be the largest in India with a customer base of over 250 brands and retailers, and 1500 enterprise customers.
Qwikcilver, which was founded in 2006, is a full-stack gift card service provider, powering nine out of every ten gift cards in the country and managing an annualised gross transaction value of $1.5 billion across India, Middle East and South East Asia.
Actis has been a prolific investor in growth market payment businesses and was an early investor in Stone, the Brazilian payments company that had a record listing on the Nasdaq last year.
