Pine Labs announced on Tuesday that it has secured a $600 million funding round, with the Asian merchant commerce platform aiming to enter public markets within two years.

The round included investments from Fidelity Management & Research Company, BlackRock, Ishana, a fund backed by Neuberger Berman Investment Advisers, IIFL, and Kotak, and valued the startup at $3 billion. Pine Labs announced the fresh round earlier this year but did not reveal the name.

Pine Labs, which counts Sequoia Capital India, Temasek, PayPal, and Mastercard among its early investors, provides payment terminals, invoicing tools, and working capital to hundreds of thousands of merchants.

Its payment terminals, also known as point-of-sale machines, are cloud-connected and provide businesses with a variety of extra services, such as working capital. Pine Labs' payment terminal works with over two dozen banks, financial institutions, and technological companies.

This sets Pine Labs apart from the competitors, whose terminals often only work with one bank. When a competitor forms a new agreement with a bank, they must introduce new machines onto the market. This increases the cost of the implementation for both the fintech and the bank. (This is why you'll typically notice many terminals at a restaurant's check-out.) According to the company, it conducts tens of billions of payment transactions each year.

“Pine Labs has made great headway in India's offline-to-online approach and its direct-to-consumer push in Southeast Asia over the last year. B. Amrish Rau, CEO of Pine Labs, said, "Our full-stack approach to payments and merchant commerce has helped us to grow in-month merchant partnerships by nearly 100 percent over the last year."

“We are excited to bring onboard a stellar set of new investors in this round and appreciate their faith in the Pine Labs business model and our growth momentum,” Amrish Rau said, adding that he wants to take the company public in 18 months.

Pine Labs has made many acquisitions in recent years to expand its business. It bought QwikCilver in 2019, which is the market leader in gift cards. It expanded its consumer side of the business earlier this year by purchasing Southeast Asian upstart Fave for $45 million.

The Fave app is currently available to over 6 million customers across 40,000 merchant locations, according to the company.

“Through its acquisitions of QwikCilver and Fave, Pine Labs now controls the region's premier pre-paid platform as well as the leading customer loyalty offering. Sequoia Capital's Shailendra Singh, MD, said, "With leadership across numerous categories, the company is exceptionally well-positioned to help deliver significant value to its merchant partners in India and throughout other SEA markets."

(Source: TechCrunch)

(Image Credits: Pine Labs)