News Update

Pine Labs, funded by Mastercard Inc., expected to postpone its planned initial public offering in the US until later this year

• ByStartupStory     |    February 28, 2022

Pine Labs was founded by Rajul Garg in 1998, but he left the company in 2003. The payments company was then taken over by Lokvir Kapoor, the company’s current chairman. It focused on large-scale smart card-based payments and loyalty solutions for Indian organisations before shifting to its current business model.

In May 2021, Pine Labs secured $285 million from a group of well-known public market-focused cross-over funds, bringing its total valuation to roughly $3 billion. Furthermore, in August 2021, they appointed CRED creator Kunal Shah to its board of directors.

Pine Labs then, raised $600 million from Fidelity Investments, Blackrock, and others in 2021, followed by a $100 million fundraise from the US-based Invesco Developing Markets Fund in 2022.

In addition, the finance behemoth has recently completed a few acquisitions. It paid an unknown sum for online payments firm Qfix Infocomm earlier this month.

Merchants from a variety of industries—electronics, food and beverage, fashion, pharmaceutical, telecom, and airlines—use Pine Labs’ solutions, but they are largely offline players.

Pine Labs said last week that it had raised $150 million in a new investment round led by Alpha Wave Ventures. According to The Economic Times, the acquisition valued the company at approximately $5 billion.

In succeeding rounds, the fortunes of some of the heavily-funded firms in the payments industry have soared. Razorpay, for example, is currently worth $7.5 billion, up sevenfold since the beginning of 2021, while BharatPe is worth around $2.85 billion.

Pine Labs, which is funded by Mastercard Inc., may postpone its planned initial public offering in the United States until later this year, according to two people familiar with the situation.

For a Nasdaq offering in January or February, the payment solutions business had hired Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. Due to unfavourable market conditions, it may now postpone the IPO until the end of this year or potentially early 2023, and instead focus on overseas expansion to boost revenue and enhance margins, according to persons who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

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