Payments solutions provider Pine Labs Pvt. Ltd said on Tuesday it has appointed Citrus Pay co-founder Amrish Rau as its new chief executive officer.
Rau will take over from current head Vicky Bindra, who will continue to be a strategic advisor to the company.
Lokvir Kapoor, executive chairman at Pine Labs, said the firm would benefit from Rau’s ability to innovate on the product front, and his capabilities in seeking out customers and commerce channels.
“Pine Labs is an amazing platform that converges everything from everyday payments, to credit and gift cards. Deep domain knowledge and innovative product designs have helped Pine Labs lead the market,” Rau added.
Rau has more than two decades of experience in fintech. He set up Citrus Pay in 2013, with the company being sold to PayU in 2016. He then worked as the CEO of PayU India from October 2016 till March 2019. Following that, he also held the responsibility of PayU’s financial technology investments and partnerships portfolio.
Apart from Citrus Pay and PayU, Rau has also served as the managing director for First Data Asia. He has also been associated with Teradata, NCR Corporation and Siemens Nixdorf.
His appointment as CEO comes after the Noida-based Pine Labs raised funding from global payments firm Mastercard Inc. in January this year. Reports at the time suggested that Mastercard had agreed to invest in the company as part of a larger $300 million (around Rs 2,138.58 crore) financing round.
New York-based Advent Capital was also expected to participate in the round, valuing Pine Labs at between $1.2-1.5 billion, according to the reports.
Pine Labs was founded in 1998 by Rajul Garg, who quit the company in 2003. The payments company was then taken over by Kapoor. Initially, it focused on large-scale smart card-based payment and loyalty solutions for Indian petro companies before shifting to its current business model.
In May 2018, Singapore state investment firm Temasek and American payments giant PayPal Holdings Inc. invested a total of $125 million (around Rs 843 crore) in Pine Labs. That infusion came after private equity firm Actis Capital led an $82 million (around Rs 530 crore) in the company in March that year.
