Pine labs

In March 2018 Actis announced an investment in Pine Labs, India’s largest digital retail payments platform.

Pine Labs is revolutionising point-of-sale payments in India, replacing the standard card-centric point-of-sale terminal with a smart, cloud-based payments platform that’s designed to reduce costs and drive revenue for retailers. Pine currently processes 450 million transactions worth over US$15 billion, on an annualized basis, helping drive the government’s “Digital India” mission.

Merchants across India have historically had to utilize multiple payment terminals to process cards issued by various banks, a situation that created additional costs, clutter and headaches around payments reconciliation.  Pine Labs solved this problem by creating cloud-based software that can be integrated with a generic point of sale terminal, allowing merchants to accept traditional electronic payment methods such as credit or debit card issued by any bank, as well as new generation methods such as e-wallets, QR code payment solutions or other UPI based solutions, on a single platform.

Pine’s cloud-based platform has also enabled the company to create and deploy additional innovative products for retailers, including targeted customer-engagement campaigns; consumer analytics; and in-store consumer financing for partner brands that can be tailored to customers at the point of sale.  This innovative consumer financing product, which connects the merchant, the credit card company, the brand and the consumer in real time at the point of sale, has facilitated more than US$1 billion in consumer credit on an annualized basis.

The latest products in Pine Labs’ fast-growing portfolio include electronic gift cards, and a pay-by-points product that spans major card loyalty programs. Pine Labs has also partnered with NBFCs to rapidly scale up the merchant lending business.

Pine Labs integrates India’s top 12 credit and debit card issuing banks, and the top 14 merchant-acquirers, on its payment platform.  Over 75,000 merchants across India’s retail, e-commerce, electronics, food and beverage, fashion, financial, pharmacy, telecom and airlines industries are now using Pine Labs.

Pine Labs, which handles approximately 15% of India’s cashless transactions in physical retail stores, is currently deployed at approximately 300,000 payment acceptance terminals.  The company aims to reach 1 million payment acceptance points in India in the next three to five years.