Payment solutions provider Pine Labs Pvt. Ltd on Tuesday said it has acquired Southeast Asia-based fintech platform Fave for $45 million (Rs 337 crore).
The acquisition will help both the companies boost their growth in the Asian region, said PineLabs in a statement.
In July 2020, Pine Labs had made a strategic investment in Fave.
As part of the transaction, Fave’s founders will have their roles expanded to lead the overall consumer platform for the group across Asia.
Fave, which offers an app to consumers to pay and save, has presence in 35 cities across Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. The company will be launching in all the major cities in India this year.
The introduction of the Fave app in India comes at a time when Unified Payments Interface (UPI) grew to 2.7 billion transactions in March, it noted. Pine Labs itself recorded a significant growth of 171% in UPI transactions over the last two quarters.
Pine Labs previously acquired QwikCilver in 2019 for which it raised additional capital from investor Actis Advisors.
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.
Amrish Rau, co-founder of Citrus Pay, joined as chief executive officer of Pine Labs last year.
In December last year, Pine Labs raised funding from US-based investment firm Lone Pine Capital in a new round that took its valuation to more than $2 billion (Rs 14,740 crore).
In January last year, Pine Labs raised capital from Mastercard Inc that propelled the company into the unicorn club of technology startups that have a valuation of at least $1 billion.
Previously it has raised funding from Sequoia Capital, Temasek and Paypal.
