Indian payments solution firm Pine Labs—the first company to become a unicorn this year—has raised a fresh round of funding from Lone Pine Capital at a valuation of USD 2 billion.
Although the company did not disclose the size of the deal, it is pegged at around USD 75-100 million, local media Economic Times, said.
Earlier this January, the Noida-based company reportedly secured around USD 100 million from global payments giant Master Card at a valuation of USD 1.5-1.6 billion, landing itself in the coveted unicorn club.
The two-decade-old company provides merchants a platform to accept multiple modes of payments including point-of-sale solutions and get in-depth customer insights and offers them working capital.
“Small businesses and consumers are fast adopting to digital commerce and contactless checkout,” Amrish Rau, CEO, Pine Labs said in a statement. “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 (Southeast Asia).”
The company, in partnership with Mastercard, had rolled out its pay later service in early 2020 to offer consumers the flexibility of zero-interest installments on purchases in order to expand businesses for merchants. Earlier this month, Pine Labs said it would take the new service to Thailand and the Philippines in February 2021, followed shortly by Vietnam, Singapore, and Indonesia.
Currently, Pine Labs claims to serve more than 150,000 merchants in 3,700 cities across Asia and the Middle East.
In July 2020, the company made a strategic investment in Southeast Asian startup Fave, a fintech platform that provides QR payments and loyalty cashback to restaurants and retailers in 35 cities across Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. This tie-up helped Pine Labs to venture into the Southeast Asia market and the duo now provides cashless payment solutions to over 50,000 merchants across the region.
“PayLater has been important in small cities of India. Data, brand, and bank/fintech partnership is key to this solution, and it delivered value to retailers and consumers,” Rau said in a tweet. He added that the company doubled its business in international markets with the investment in Fave.