Pine Labs scoops up $125 Mn from Temasek and PayPal: Has it become Unicorn?

Temasek Holdings and PayPal have acquired a minority stake for about $125 million in payment acceptance solution Pine Labs. Both investors will essentially be picking up secondary shares from promoters and Sequoia Capital.

While it’s not clear whether the deal involves the acquisition of primary shares or not, as per Entrackr’s sources the company is valued about $1 billion in the latest financing round. We have sent the queries to Pine Labs for ascertaining its valuation and other details.

Pine Labs offers a SaaS-based point-of-sale (PoS) payments solutions for credit or debit card, digital wallets, EMI, Gift/Meal Cards as well as latest methods including digital wallets, QR code payment solutions and unified payments interface (UPI)-based solutions.

With 10 per cent share in PoS market in India, it claims to power digital payment modes for over 75,000 Retailers including Marks and Spencer, Pantaloons and Shoppers Stop amongst several others on a daily basis.

Two months ago, the Delhi-based company had raised about $82 million from Actis Capital and tech-focused fund Altimeter Capital. It claims to process 450 million transactions worth $15 billion on a yearly basis.

Importantly, even after selling a partial stake in Pine Labs, Sequoia Capital remains the largest stakeholder in the company. Pine Labs competes with likes of MSwipe, Innoviti Payment, Ezetap and Atom Technologies amongst few others in India.

With having Paypal and Temasek on board, Pine Labs will be in better position in expanding its business in overseas markets. Last year, the company had begun operations in Malaysia and eyes to increase its footprint South-East Asian countries such as the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Besides, it plans to have a presence in Middle East countries such as United Arab Emirates (UAE) followed by Saudi Arabia as well as Qatar in West Asia.

While Pine Labs hasn’t disclosed valuation in the fresh funding round, it certainly becomes the second pure-play tech company to achieve Unicorn status. Companies valued $1 billion are referred to as Unicorn.

The development was reported by Mint.