Just two months after raising $82 M, Pine Labs now sells minority stake to Temasek and PayPal for $125 M
Digital payments player and retail PoS solution provider Pine Labs on Thursday announced that Singapore-based Temasek, and global technology platform PayPal Holdings Inc. have acquired a minority stake in the company for a combined $125 million.
The news of the fund raise comes just two months after the company announced its $82 million funding round, led by Actis Capital, and new investor Altimeter Capital. The company then was in talks with banks to launch the platform in multiple countries.
The company will use the funds raised to expand its product suite, and build new layers of services for merchants, banks, and other communities related to the payment ecosystem.
Further, being a strategic investor, Temasek will help Pine Labs to bolster its presence in regional South Asian markets, which the investor has a strong hold on. On the other hand, PayPal’s expertise will also help Pine Labs further refine its product, while piloting its product offerings with the PoS retailer.
Speaking on the announcement, Lokvir Kapoor, Founder of Pine Labs said,
“We’re teaming up with Temasek and PayPal at a time when the Indian payments market is at an inflexion point. We are a leader in the offline payments space, a position that is critical in enabling the ecosystem of online payment products. The investments will help us move a step closer to our vision for building a world-class merchant-centric payments ecosystem.”
Vicky Bindra, CEO of Pine Labs, said that in India the company has reached a Gross Transaction Value of $15 billion on a base of approximately 300,000 payments acceptance points. He added,
“Our performance positions us as a critical and strategically important player in the offline-online convergence in India. Pine is also on track to originate over $1 billion of instant loans at point-of-sale terminals for card issuers and partner NBFCs this fiscal year, demonstrating the power and utility of our payments platform. The investments from Temasek and PayPal will help accelerate Pine’s growth.”
However, with this round, Sequoia India, which first invested in Pine Labs in 2009, remains to be the company’s largest shareholder.
Shailendra Singh, Managing Director of Sequoia Capital (India) Singapore, said,
“We are thrilled to welcome Temasek and PayPal to the company. In the last year, Pine Labs has added four valuable equity partners, including Actis and Altimeter, who have significant expertise in the global payments industry. This is a huge endorsement of the team’s accomplishments and provides the company a significant strategic advantage. We value our long-term partnership with Pine Lab’s leadership team, and are excited about the next phase of growth and evolution.”
But lately, the PoS player market has been attracting big funds from foreign investors.
In June last year, PoS merchant acquirer Mswipe stated that it had raised close to $31 million in Series-D funding from UC-RNT fund, along with existing investors Matrix Partners India, Falcon Edge Capital, and DSG Consumer Partners.
Mswipe later closed the round with $40 million, in the latest investment led by Facebook Co-founder Eduardo Saverin’s investment fund B Capital, along with existing investor DCG Consumer Partners.
An active reason for this could be the intersection of offline-online products, which opens a plethora of opportunities for new products like lending among others.
In August last year, payments player Ezetap said it had raised $16 million in a round led by JS Capital Management, a US-based venture capital fund.
