Why Pine Labs is acquiring Qwikcilver

Pine Labs has been among a handful of traditional payments companies to have silently expanded business across the country by deploying PoS terminals to accept card payments across organized retail and small stores.

Over the last one year. it has aggressively expanded its scope of operations and ventured outside India to the Middle East recently.

We reported earlier today that Pine Labs is close to acquiring Qwikcilver. We break down the deal for you:


*Loyalty and gifting are two intrinsic aspects of a card payments business and Pine Labs could score big on both fronts with the acquisition of Qwikcilver.

*It could also expand the scope of gifting from branded retail to smaller retailers which may be running major business in specific localities. Also Pine Labs will get access to Qwikcilver’s gift card business from more than 200 retailers.

*Qwikcilver is backed by Amazon and the ecommerce major also used its services for their gifting business. However Amazon could leverage its Amazon Pay base to move the gifting solution in-house. This aspect is not confirmed yet.

*Qwikcilver is likely to mop up $100 million from Pine Labs, and its investors would be able to make a healthy exit from the company, with five to six times returns for the likes of Accel, Helion, and even later investors Amazon and Sistema.