Currency, turmoil, and uncertainty plagued the payment process. This brought in the ATM facilities and the ATM-cum debit cards for banking users. The wording is a little different, but the wording is the same. Pine Labs was founded to address these issues.
Pine Labs, founded in 1998 as a basic card-based payment and loyalty programme, is today an Indian merchant platform firm that provides finance and last-mile retail transaction technologies to merchants and customers that accept payments.
However, it was in 2009 that Pine labs’ actual payments journey began when it entered into the mainstream payments arena and opted to give solutions to the merchants by linking to banks and other financial institutions with the all-new Pine Labs swipe machines.
The organization was acutely aware that merchants were seeking ways to better their contact with customers throughout the payment process. So, it began cooperating with banks and payment aggregators and assured its PoS devices could handle all types of digital payments.
Pine Labs presently supports merchant platforms and develops pos terminals and point-of-sale software. The firm presently counts over 70,000 merchants in India, including household names such as Marks and Spencer’s Retail, Pantaloons, Westside, and others. It is also a unicorn, having entered the coveted club of Indian unicorns in January 2020 by financing an undisclosed sum from the American multinational corporation Mastercard, becoming the first Indian unicorn firm to emerge as a unicorn in 2020.
About Pine lab’s process
PineLabs PoS devices are used by retailers every day to boost revenue while lowering costs, complexity, and hazards. This provides Pine Labs a unique opportunity to join in its growth path. It focuses on merchant demands, revenue-generating strategies, last-mile retail transaction technology, data analysis, and customer and shopper experiences. The firm provides a full-stack merchant platform that combines technology and financial solutions.
Pine Labs’ solutions, which are utilized by merchants from various industries, are presently used by over 100,000 merchants in India and other Asian nations. The company’s cloud-based infrastructure runs over 350,000 PoS in over 3,700 towns in India alone.
Their Journey
The company’s first focus was on large-scale, smart, card-based payment and loyalty systems for the retail gasoline business. The company’s true payments adventure began in 2009, when it entered the mainstream payments industry to give solutions to merchants through its PoS devices, linking them to banks and other financial institutions.
The business collaborated with banks and payment aggregators to guarantee that their devices were capable of processing all types of digital payments.
Pine Labs had reinvented its payment technology services by 2012 and had developed into a firm that pioneered the smart, cloud-based unified point-of-sale platform, which was aimed to decrease costs and boost revenues for merchants. Its partnerships with leading banks and brands enabled the firm to provide a variety of services to merchants via its platform.
As a result, it expanded into a merchant platform that includes solutions for payments, risk assessment, multi-channel analytics, merchant loans and insurance, brand offers, cashback, integrated invoicing, and other services. It presently has a network of more than 21 financial institutions and 100 brands.
Pine Labs established its first worldwide reach in 2017 with an exclusive agreement with CIMB Bank in Malaysia. And now, Pine Labs is well on its way to becoming the world’s most sophisticated merchant platform, combining technology and financial solutions to fulfill every demand of the contemporary merchant.
Business model
Pine Labs, after two decades of close collaboration with merchants, now assists retailers in selling more, growing more, and building more efficiently. It meets the Omni channel requirements of merchants. It caters to merchants of all sizes, assisting them to prosper in a changing global economy by combining technology and subject expertise
The Pine Labs business strategy is updated as per its merchants’ demands. The payments startup deployed innovative, cloud-based point-of-sale (PoS) equipment that boosted its contact with clients during the payment process. Pine Labs has reformed the payment technology market while also contributing to the global digital economy. It is also considered one of the oldest fintech startups in India.
Revenue growth
Pine Labs has over 150K merchants spread throughout 3700+ locations in India and Malaysia. Cards, QR codes, or phone number billing can be used to commence transactions on Pine Labs equipment. The firm also provides working capital loans and loyalty programmes through PinePerks.
Pine Labs has long been at the forefront of the PoS industry, providing retailers with card-swiping terminals. Pine Labs is presently developing Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL), invoice management, gifting, and eCommerce solutions to broaden its service range.
Future plans
Pine Labs, a digital retail payments platform, is preparing for the next stage of its journey. It intends to introduce cutting-edge solutions aimed at providing a better customer experience, expand into new markets and categories, and finally go public in the following 18 months.
The company’s public offering is anticipated to be valued at roughly $1 billion. Furthermore, according to January 2022 rumors, the corporation plans to float on the NASDAQ stock exchange this year. Before its IPO, the business has already retained Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs as consultants.
In the next couple of years, the Noida-based business is also anticipating the total payment volume (TPV) on its transactions to climb more than four-fold to $100 billion from $23 billion. That would place Pine Labs in the same league as Square Inc, a US-based banking and merchant services provider with a gross payment volume of $84.65 billion in the most recent fiscal period, up from 65.35 billion in 2017.
