Fintech unicorn Pine Labs has announced raising a fresh round of funding from Lone Pine Capital at a valuation of over $2 Bn. While the company did not disclose the funding amount, CEO B Amrish Rau, announced on Twitter than Lone Pine will join marquee investors such as Sequoia, Temasek, Mastercard and others.
“Small businesses and consumers are fast adopting to digital commerce and contactless checkout. We are also seeing tremendous uptake in Pay Later services and have now enabled nearly 150,000 outlets for this. It’s time to invest heavily in offline and online commerce across India and SEA,” Rau said in a press statement.
Founded in 1998 by Lokvir Kapoor, Pine Labs enables online and offline retail transactions. It claims to process $30 Bn payments per year.
The company, which entered the unicorn club this year, had last raised funding in January from Mastercard. Earlier this month, the two companies announced that they will expand the Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) solution to five Southeast Asian markets early next year. Rau added that PayLater has been important in small cities of India, powered by data, brand and bank partnerships.
Talking about the year gone by, Rau said that Pine Labs’ engineering team has been working hard on the BNPL product, merchant services and consumer loyalty programmes. The company claims to have delivered 25K store front terminals with Pine’s App Store, while adding doorstep payments for merchants during this time.
It has been more than an eventful year for Pine Labs, besides the funding rounds and the bump in valuation.
Citrus Pay founder Rau joined Pine Labs as its chief executive officer in March this year. He replaced Vicky Bindra who was heading Pine Labs since May 2018. Then in July, Pine Labs made a strategic investment in Singapore-based commerce platform Fave for cashless payment solutions to over 50K merchants in Malaysia, Singapore and SEA. It was also said to be considering a buy-out of the Asian business of bankrupt payments and risk management service provider Wirecard.
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