Pine Labs would use the funds to scale its online payment brand, Plural, and expand its merchant commerce offerings at the offline point-of-sale
The Local Head Office of State Bank of India, Mumbai Circle. (Credit: Manjulkumar/Wikipedia.)
Indian merchant commerce platform Pine Labs has announced a new investment of $20m from the State Bank of India (SBI), the country’s largest public sector bank.
Last year, Pine Labs raised $600m from a group of new investors and followed by a $100m investment from US-based Invesco Developing Markets Fund.
The merchant commerce platform intends to use the funds to scale Plural, its newly launched brand of online payment products, and expand its merchant commerce offerings at the offline point-of-sale.
The company also plans to expand its Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) business across India and Southeast Asia, to become an omnichannel partner for merchants.
Pine Labs CEO B Amrish Rau said: “We are thrilled to have the largest bank of India, the State Bank of India place their trust in us and welcome them in this journey where we are empowering merchants with seamless and secure payment experiences across offline and online platforms.
“In the last one year, several marquee investors have placed their trust in our business model and growth momentum and that is a gratifying feeling.
“This association with SBI is a personally satisfying experience as I had started my career selling financial services technology to SBI.”
Pine Labs is engaged in providing cloud-based software platform to large, mid-sized and small merchants across India and Southeast Asia.
It offers a wide range of payment acceptance and merchant commerce solutions, including inventory management and customer relationship management.
The company has entered the consumer payment business through the acquisition of Southeast Asian consumer payments Fave in April last year.
Fave smart payment app is currently available in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia with plans to expand the offering soon in India.
Pine Labs also has a presence in the Gift, Prepaid and Stored Value business segment, obtained through its acquisition of Qwikcilver in 2019.
Under the stored value platform, the company issues, processes, and distributes digital gift cards for corporate customers worldwide.
Last month, Pine Labs has rolled out ‘Plural Tokenizer’, its Card-on-File or CoF tokenisation solution that can be used across different card networks.
Plural Tokenizer works by replacing the debit or credit card details with tokens, or randomly generated numbers, and features OTP-based Two-Factor Authentication.