Pine Labs

Pine Labs was incorporated as Pine Labs Private Limited in 1998 and started operations in India.⁠[1]

The company was founded by Lokvir KapoorLokvir KapoorLokvir Kapoor is an Indian business executive and co-founder of the payment technology company Pine Labs. He was Pine Labs’ chief executive from 2004 to 2018 and then its executive chairman.Open the full entry, Rajul GargRajul GargRajul Garg is an Indian entrepreneur and venture capitalist who co-founded the payment technology company Pine Labs and also helped found GlobalLogic and Sunstone Business School. He later founded the early-stage technology venture firm Leo Capital.Open the full entry and Tarun Upadhyay.⁠[2]

From the late 1990s to 2004 Pine Labs mainly offered smart card-based payment and loyalty solutions for the petroleum sector.⁠[3]

In 2005 Pine Labs launched Plutus.⁠[1]

In March 2009 Sequoia Capital IndiaPeak XV PartnersPeak XV Partners is a venture capital firm that grew out of Sequoia’s India and Southeast Asia business, investing across the seed, venture and growth stages in markets including India, Asia-Pacific and the United States. The firm began operating as Sequoia Capital India in 2006 and adopted its current name and became independent in 2023.Open the full entry (later renamed Peak XV Partners) invested $1.2 million in the Noida-based startup; Peak XV said Pine Labs had spun out of its portfolio company GlobalLogic.⁠[4]

It launched PayLater in 2013 and PinePerks in 2014, and entered Malaysia in 2017.⁠[1]

On March 19, 2019, Pine Labs announced a $110 million agreement to acquire gift-card solutions company Qwikcilver, funded from internal cash and additional money from existing investors; the deal closed on April 19, and Qwikcilver co-founder and CEO Kumar Sudarsan joined Pine Labs’ leadership.⁠[5]

On July 22, 2019, Pine Labs appeared before the District Court in Bangalore in a suit alleging infringement of Indian patent IN309274; the company denied infringing and said it would challenge the patent’s validity.⁠[6]

On January 24, 2020, Pine Labs announced an undisclosed investment from Mastercard; the two planned to offer card- and real-time-payment-based instalment financing at checkout in stores and online.⁠[7]

On March 3, 2020, Pine Labs named Amrish Rau CEO, replacing Vicky Bindra, who was returning to San Francisco after two years in the role. The company, then incorporated in Singapore, processed about $30 billion in payments a year for some 140,000 merchants across about 450,000 network points in India, Southeast Asia and the Middle East.⁠[8]

Pine Labs was valued at about $1 billion in early 2020 and at about $2 billion after a December 2020 round.⁠[9]

Pine Labs first invested in Southeast Asian startup Fave in 2020 and on April 13, 2021, announced its acquisition for $45 million; Fave started as a fitness subscription service and later helped offline merchants win customers through gift cards and vouchers.⁠[10]

In May 2021 Pine Labs completed the first close of a $285 million round led by Ward Ferry Management, Baron Capital Group, Duro Capital, Marshall Wace and Moore Strategic Ventures at a $3 billion valuation; it then served over 140,000 merchants with about 600,000 payment terminals deployed.⁠[9]

In July 2021 Pine Labs said the round totalled $600 million, with investors including Fidelity Management & Research Company, BlackRockBlackRockBlackRock is a publicly traded investment management company headquartered in New York, founded in 1988 by Larry Fink and seven others and listed on the New York Stock Exchange (ticker BLK); its businesses include the iShares family of exchange-traded funds and the Aladdin investment and risk management platform. As of June 30, 2026, its assets under management totaled $15.3 trillion.Open the full entry, a fund advised by Neuberger Berman, IIFL and Kotak; CEO Amrish Rau said it planned to explore the public markets within two years.⁠[11]

In September 2021 Invesco Developing Markets Fund invested a further $100 million in Pine Labs.⁠[12]

In August 2021 Pine Labs appointed CRED founder Kunal Shah to its board.⁠[13]

Pine Labs launched Plural in 2021, acquired QFix, Mosambee and Setu in 2022, and acquired Credit+ in 2023.⁠[1]

In January 2022 State Bank of India, the country’s largest commercial bank, invested $20 million in Pine Labs, which said it would use the money to scale its newly launched online payments brand Plural and its buy-now-pay-later business.⁠[14]

In June 2022 Pine Labs acquired Setu, a Bengaluru-based API fintech startup, on undisclosed terms; Setu’s APIs covered Aadhaar eSign, BBPS bill payments and FASTag collections, among other uses.⁠[15]

In January 2023 Pine Labs entered the United Arab Emirates, opening an office at Emaar Business Park in Dubai and announcing a partnership with Kalyan Jewellers.⁠[16]

In May 2024 Pine Labs received Singapore court approval to merge its Singapore entity into its Indian unit, allowing it to transfer all its assets to India; it was then valued at over $5 billion, with backers including Peak XV, Fidelity, Invesco, Temasek, PayPalPayPalPayPal Holdings, Inc. (Nasdaq: PYPL) is an American digital payments company that operates payment brands including PayPal, Venmo, Braintree, and Xoom, providing online and in-store payments, money transfers, and consumer credit to consumers and merchants worldwide.Open the full entry and Alpha WaveAlpha Wave GlobalAlpha Wave Global (known as Alpha Wave) is an alternative asset manager founded in 2012, operating in private equity, private credit, and insurance and retirement solutions; its portfolio includes SpaceX, Anthropic, OpenAI, Cerebras, and Long Lake.Open the full entry.⁠[17]

In 2025 Pine Labs merged with Pine Labs Singapore.⁠[1]

Pine Labs’ FY2025 revenue rose 28.5% to Rs 2,274 crore, and its net loss narrowed 57% to Rs 145 crore. In early November 2025 it filed its red herring prospectus for a fresh issue of Rs 2,080 crore plus an offer for sale of up to 8.23 crore shares by holders including Peak XV, Temasek, PayPal and Mastercard; subscription ran from November 7 to 11, with listing planned on the NSE and BSE.⁠[18]

Compared with the June draft prospectus, the fresh issue was cut 20% and the offer for sale 44%; at the top of the Rs 210–221 price band the valuation was about Rs 254 billion (about $2.9 billion), roughly 40% below its last private round.⁠[19]

On its debut on November 14, 2025, Pine Labs shares opened at Rs 242, touched Rs 284 and closed at Rs 252, 14% above the Rs 221 issue price, for a market value of about Rs 289 billion (about $3.3 billion).⁠[20]

In February 2026 Noida-based Pine Labs said it would embed OpenAIOpenAIOpenAI is an artificial intelligence research and product organization founded in 2015 that develops the GPT model series, ChatGPT, Codex and a developer API, and conducts research on image, speech, video and intelligent agents. After its 2025 restructuring, the nonprofit OpenAI Foundation continues to control the for-profit OpenAI Group PBC. Its growth has involved large-scale fundraising and compute partnerships, and has also been accompanied by controversies over governance, copyright, privacy and AI safety.Open the full entry’s APIs in its payments and commerce infrastructure, starting with business-to-business uses such as invoice processing, settlement and payments orchestration; it said the deal was non-exclusive with no revenue sharing. It then served more than 980,000 merchants, 716 consumer brands and 177 financial institutions across 20 countries.⁠[21]

In February 2026 Pine Labs said it had won multi-year contracts from Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited, Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited and Indian Oil Corporation Limited to deploy, manage and maintain nearly 130,000 digital payment acceptance devices at fuel stations and outlets across India, and to run Indian Oil’s XTRAPOWER fleet loyalty platform.⁠[22]

In April 2026 Pine Labs acquired Shopflo, a checkout-optimisation SaaS platform used by more than 1,000 e-commerce brands, for an undisclosed price; Shopflo was founded by Priy Ranjan with Ankit Bansal and Ishan Rakshit.⁠[23]

In May 2026 Pine Labs entered the Philippines with GCash for Business as its first payments partner, adding instalment, loyalty and cashback features to its merchant acquiring offering; Pine Labs has a locally incorporated entity in the country.⁠[24]

Pine Labs: Official website: https://www.pinelabs.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[25]

X: Official account: https://x.com/pinelabs (opens in a new window)⁠[25]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Official account: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pinelabs (opens in a new window)⁠[25]

YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry: Official account: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFgMWH8YdL_T-mz5TejZgmg (opens in a new window)⁠[25]