Pine Labs enters consumer payments with acquisition of Fave

Fave’s investors will receive an all-cash payout, while founders and key Fave employees will receive both cash and Pine Labs shares. (Priyanka Parashar/Mint)Premium
Fave’s investors will receive an all-cash payout, while founders and key Fave employees will receive both cash and Pine Labs shares. (Priyanka Parashar/Mint)
 2 min read . Updated: 13 Apr 2021, 02:10 PM IST Tarush Bhalla

BENGALURU : Merchant payment platform Pine Labs on Tuesday announced the acquisition of Singapore-based loyalty cashback startup Fave for $45 million, as it looks to double down on the consumer payment category in India and Southeast Asian markets.

With the acquisition, Fave will bring its consumer loyalty offering to India and will launch a separate app for consumers. This marks Pine Labs' foray into consumer payments within its home country.

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Fave’s investors will receive an all-cash payout, while founders and key Fave employees will receive both cash and Pine Labs shares.

The Singapore-based platform allows users to make QR-based offline payments through the app and alerts them about offers, cashbacks and loyalty benefits, which the store is running during the payment process.

For its launch in India, Fave will be offering unified payments interface (UPI)-based payments for Indian consumers, and is awaiting necessary approvals from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).

“More and more offline merchants want to create engagement programmes with their existing customers to boost loyalty and store walk-ins. However, the cashbacks and loyalty experience is broken in the offline world. Through Fave, consumers can be apprised of these benefits under one ecosystem, assisted by Pine Labs’ deep partnership with these merchants," B. Amrish Rau, chief executive officer (CEO), Pine Labs told Mint.

The acquisition will also help both companies accelerate their growth in the Asia region and unlock massive consumer opportunities across domains of retail, food & beverage, fashion and FMCG. Last December, Mint first reported that Pine Labs was entering Southeast Asian markets of Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam, Singapore and Indonesia with its "Buy Now Pay Later" credit offering through a partnership with investor Mastercard.

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Consolidating Pine Labs’ consumer play, Fave will offer Qwikcilver’s gift card offering on the new platform, along with credit "Buy Now, Pay Later" solutions to customers which offline merchants would offer.

“We have been successful in digitizing and consolidating the loyalty ecosystem which offline merchants offer to customers (either through membership cards or paper coupons) in Singapore and Malaysian markets. Fave plans to execute the same with the consumer app in India, which is expected to launch by this quarter," added Joel Neoh, co-founder and CEO of Fave.

Fave founders will have their roles expanded to lead the overall consumer platform across Asia and will hire over 100 new employees, the company said.

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