Pine Labs appoints Nitish Asthana as President and COO

Fintech firm Pine Labs on Monday said it has appointed Nitish Asthana as President and Chief Operating Officer.

Joining the company's leadership team, Asthana will focus on accelerating the company's efforts towards technology innovation and increasing digital payment acceptance among merchants across India and Southeast Asia, a statement said.

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With more than two decades of experience in senior executive roles across payments, fintech and finance areas, Asthana previously served as the Managing Director (India and Sri Lanka) at First Data Corp, Fiserv.

Pine Labs serves over 1.5 lakh merchants in 3,700 cities with over 4.5 lakh merchant touchpoints.

Recently, the Noida-headquartered merchant commerce fintech company, had made an undisclosed investment into Malaysia-based fintech platform Fave.

According to a press release, under the terms of the partnership, Fave’s QR code will become interoperable and integrated with Pine Lab’s point of sale terminals across Southeast Asia.

Following this partnership, Fave’s merchant payment acceptance and loyalty cashback solutions will expand into both debit and credit cards platforms via Pine Labs payment terminals.

According to the release, nearly 50,000 of Fave’s and Pine Labs’ merchants in Southeast Asia will benefit immediately from the partnership. The collaboration aims to scale and grow more businesses digitally in the coming months.

Fave’s Co-Founder and CEO, Joel Neoh, said, “We will work with Pine Labs to further strengthen Fave’s mission of helping merchants adapt to and digitalise in the new normal.”

According to Fave and Pine Labs, the post-pandemic recovery in Southeast Asia has started with promising signs that it is underway with specific sectors such as automotive sales and F&B. A research by Mastercard’s Impact Studies stated that there has been a notable decrease in cash usage since the start of the pandemic.

The Asia-Pacific region is leading the surge in digital payments with majority of consumers believing it is the cleaner, safer way to pay.

(Disclaimer: Additional background information has been added to this PTI copy for context.)