Pine Labs
“Can India's leading in-store payments company become the embedded finance and credit infrastructure layer for merchants across Asia?”
Founded in 1998 as a petroleum retail automation business, Pine Labs pivoted in 2004 to merchant payments with Android-based POS terminals, becoming the dominant in-store payments player in India. The 2019 Qwikcilver acquisition extended the franchise into prepaid/gift card issuance, and the company has since layered online payments (Plural), embedded credit on UPI, and fintech infrastructure APIs (issuance, KYC, account aggregator) for banks and NBFCs. The 2025 IPO at a haircut to its 2022 private valuation reframes Pine Labs from a domestic POS leader into a pan-Asia merchant-commerce and embedded-finance infrastructure provider.