Pine Labs Pvt Ltd on Thursday said it has entered the online payment space with the launch of its new product Plural, that will bring it head-to-head with the likes of Razorpay.
"What our technology folks have delivered with Plural is absolutely a world-class, advanced tech, and a seamless way for online commerce to happen," said Amrish Rau, CEO, Pine Labs, in a statement.
“After focusing on traditional merchants and EMI and installment led merchants, we wanted to create a payment solution for new-age brands We plan to take Plural to South-east Asia next year in 2022,” Rau told Mint.
Tanya Malik, who was previously the director of payments at PayPal India, is now heading Pine Labs’ Plural business. “The differentiation that we look to bring with Plural is that it is an open platform and can integrate with any solution which a merchant was already using. With Plural, we can also now offer a suite of products under one brand across all channels (offline and online) through our multiple offerings which will bring an integrated omni-channel payment experience for brands,” said Malik.
The main products under Plural brand are Plural Gateway, Plural Checkout, and Plural Console.
Plural Gateway is a customisable payment gateway that enables payment acceptance through over 100 modes of payment. It is also equipped to process transactions involving Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL), which has now become the buzzword in the fintech space.
Its Plural Checkout product is a Mobile SDK (software development kit) that helps bolster payment gateway performance for Android and iOS users while Plural Console is a payment orchestration platform (POP) that provides a single tech framework to trigger transactions via multiple payment gateways.
As its potential customers for its Plural product, Pine Labs aims to get online stores, big e-commerce companies, large-scale government institutions, and large financial services companies on board.
This year Pine Labs has raised big ticket rounds ahead of its initial public offering (IPO).
Last month, Pine Labs raised $100 million (Rs 734 crore) in a new investment round from US-based investment management company Invesco.
This funding came just months after it closed its $600 million funding round earlier in July from US-based asset management firm Fidelity Management and Research Company, BlackRock, Ishana, Tree Line, and a fund advised by Neuberger Berman Investment Advisers LLC. IIFL AMC, via its Late-Stage Tech Fund, and Kotak Funds also took part in the round.
Pine Labs was founded in 1998 by Rajul Garg, who quit the company in 2003. The payments company was then taken over by Lokvir Kapoor, currently the firm's chairman.
Initially, it focused on large-scale smart card-based payments and loyalty solutions for Indian metro companies before shifting to its current business model, and raising significant venture capital funding along the way. Its other investors include Sequoia Capital, Temasek Holdings, Actis, PayPal and Mastercard.
In August, Pine Labs roped in CRED founder Kunal Shah on its board.
The company has also made acquisitions in the past. It acquired Southeast Asia-based fintech platform Fave for $45 million (Rs 337 crore) in April 2021. In July 2020, Pine Labs made a strategic investment in Fave.
Pine Labs previously acquired QwikCilver in 2019 for which it raised capital from Actis Advisors.