Indian digital payments and commerce solutions provider Pine Labs recently said it completed the first close of USD 285 million funding as the company expects to expand its business.

The funding round saw participation from existing investors Sunley House Capital, Lone Pine Capital, and Temasek, along with several new investors, including Ward Ferry Management, Moore Strategic Ventures, Duro Capital, Baron Capital Group, and Marshall Wace.

The latest round values the startup at USD 3 billion, up from around USD 2 billion in the previous round in December, and USD 1 billion in early 2020.

Amrish Rau, CEO at Pine Labs, stated that the company will channel the new funds into the building and expanding online payments gateway and engage with pharmacies, hospitals, governments among its first set of clients.

For the record, the company serves over 140,000 merchants, counting PayPal as one of its investors. Its payment terminals, also known as point-of-sale machines, are connected to the cloud and provide merchants with several additional services including working capital.

The startup runs an analytics app on the debit card base of the banks it has partnered with, to assess the amount of credit available to each cardholder. It then uses its Pine Pay Later application to turn large payments into EMIs (equated monthly installments).

As a testament to Pine Lab’s success, Amit Rajpal, Portfolio Manager and CEO of Marshall Wace Asia, expressed they are thrilled to be a part of the technological transformation of Pine Labs in payments and the various interlinkages and efficiencies it can create by offering faster, affordable consumer access to a wide range of financial products such as BNPL (Buy Now Pay Later).

Pine Labs' recent growth can be credited to the addition of about 10,000 new businesses every month to its platform amidst the pandemic last year.

Source Credit –

https://techcrunch.com/2021/05/16/merchant-commerce-platform-pine-labs-raises-285-million/