Merchant payments and lending platform Pine Labs has raised $50 million from United Kingdom-headquartered investment firm Vitruvian Partners, the company said on March 30.
The fundraise is one of three investments received by Pine Labs this year as the company gears up for its $500 million initial public offering (IPO) in the United States.
While Pine Labs did not reveal its valuation after the round, Moneycontrol learnt that it stands at $5-5.5 billion.
Pine Labs CEO Amrish Rau said in a statement, “At Pine Labs, we are deeply focused on the omnichannel play and are building frictionless and seamless payment experiences for our merchant partners and large enterprises. We aim to further strengthen our recent foray in online payments via Plural and take our Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) offering to new markets through strategic collaborations.”
In January this year, Pine Labs also secured a $20 million investment from India’s largest lender State Bank of India (SBI). This was followed by a $150 million fundraise from Alpha Wave Global.
In 2021 alone, the company raked in a total of $900 million in investments. The first $258 million was raised in May 2021 from public market crossover investors including Baron Capital Group, Duro Capital, Marshall Wace, Moore Strategic Ventures and Ward Ferry Management.
In July 2021, the company raised $600 million at a valuation of $3 billion led by Fidelity, Blackrock and other investors.
In September 2021, the firm announced it had raised $100 million more from US-based investment management company Invesco. The investment was done through the Invesco Developing Markets Fund.
“Our investment in Pine Labs follows several investments we have made into the digital payments space, and we’re excited to partner with the management team as they continue to drive digital transformation within the rapidly growing Indian payments market,” said Peter Read, partner at Vitruvian Partners.
Pine Labs’ omnichannel payments platform approach combined with its expanding geographic footprint prompted the investment, Read added.
The company’s core payment offering is point of sale machines for offline payments and it is expanding its BNPL offering in Southeast Asia. Earlier this month, the firm had launched ‘Mastercard Installments with Pine Labs’ programme with Mastercard and DBS Bank for Singapore, Indonesia, and Hong Kong with pay later instalment purchase options at the point of sale.
In the past year, Pine Labs expanded offerings and entered the consumer payments space with the acquisition of Fave in April 2021. The company also forayed into online payments with the launch of its payment gateway platform Plural in October 2021.
Plural is expected to make the offline-to-online transition easier for Pine Labs’ merchant base and is aimed at merchants and enterprises looking to set up afresh or boosting their online commerce business.
The company, backed by Sequoia Capital, Temasek Holdings, Actis, PayPal, and Mastercard among other global investors, is reported to have filed confidentially for the IPO with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have been appointed as advisors for the float.
