Payment solutions provider Pine Labs Pvt. Ltd said Monday it has raised funding from US-based investment Lone Pine Capital in a new round that takes its valuation to more than $2 billion (Rs 14,740 crore).
The round comes almost a year after Pine Labs raised capital from Mastercard Inc in January that propelled the company into the unicorn club of technology startups that have a valuation of at least $1 billion.
Pine Labs didn’t disclose the amount it raised from Lone Pine Capital.
Mala Gaonkar, managing director at Lone Pine, said Pine Labs is innovating at scale in the payments and merchant commerce segment. “The Pine Labs team is leveraging key structural changes taking place across payments and fintech globally, including the integration of software and payments at the point-of-sale, the digitization of small-to-medium enterprises, and the rapid adoption of buy-now-pay-later offerings.”
The company’s CEO Amrish Rau, who joined as chief executive officer earlier this year, said on Twitter that its PayLater product was seeing a tremendous uptake.
“Small businesses and consumers are fast adopting digital commerce and contactless checkout,” he said. “It is time to double down on offline and online commerce across India and SEA (southeast Asia),” he said.
The company has also been acquisitive. It bought QwikCilver last year for which it raised additional capital from investor Actis Advisors.
Actis had initially invested $82 mn ( around Rs 530 crore) in Pine Labs in 2018 a few months after the company got $125 million (around Rs 843 crore) from Singapore state investment firm Temasek and American payments giant PayPal Holdings Inc.
In July 2020, Pine Labs made a strategic investment in Fave, a fintech firm based in southeast Asia.
It 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.
Currently, Pine Labs offers services to over 150,000 merchants in 3,700 cities across Asia and West Asia, the company said.
