With acquisition of Fave, Pine Labs eyes consumer payments and e-comm space

Singapore-incorporated Pine Labs has acquired Malaysia-based payments platform Fave in a $45 million cash and stock deal, a move that will enable the Point of Sales or PoS company to get into the e-commerce enablement and consumer payments segments. 

Following the transaction, Fave’s investors will receive an all-cash payout and its founders and key employees will receive both cash and shares of Pine Labs, the companies said in a joint press statement. 

This is the second acquisition for Pine Labs after Qwikcilver in 2019.

Pine Labs is also an investor in the six-year-old company as in July of 2020, the Amrish Rau-led company had made an investment and formed a strategic partnership with Fave. 

Backed by the likes of Sequoia India and GIC, Fave provides QR payments and loyalty cashback to restaurants and retailers. It operates in 35 cities across Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. 

Besides strengthening its presence and operations in these countries, Fave will launch its payments app in India, the statement said. The app will allow consumers to make transactions at nearly 5 lakh physical retail points and merchants powered by Pine Labs. 

With this, the company gets into a highly competitive consumer payments space dominated by Paytm, PhonePe and BharatPe. Fave is already in advanced stages of getting a UPI certification from NPCI to launch its payment app in India.

According to Entrackr’s sources, Pine Labs is also looking at e-commerce enablement space, which lately has turned hot and attracting decent attention from VCs. Fave enables merchants to have digital storefront and other value-added services while Pine Labs has a strong position in payments. 

“Together, they will do NFC based payments along with UPI and rewards which Fave will do,” said one of the sources requesting anonymity. 

“By integrating Fave, Pine Labs can take any spin among e-commerce enablement, merchant discovery and UPI Peer to Merchant or P2M segments,” the person added.

Pine Labs’ shot at B2B e-commerce and payments appears to be well-timed for two reasons  -- the company is in talks to raise a fresh round at a $3 billion valuation, and investor’s bullishness over dukaantech.  Recently, merchant focused e-comm and payments platform Dot had raised about $27.5 million and according to our sources, Dukaan is also in talks to raise up to $30 million.