Pine Labs, a digital payments and financial services provider has announced the acquisition of Mumbai-based online payments startup Qfix Infocomm for an undisclosed sum.
The acquisition is in line with Pine Labs bolstering its play in the online payment gateway segment, as it now looks to offer business software tools including online invoicing and workflow management to new-age direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands.
Last October, Pine Labs—which has largely focussed on offline merchants—announced its foray into the online payments space with the launch of Plural Gateway. The idea was to help small businesses accept digital payments and process ‘buy now pay later’ transactions.
The company declined to share more details of the current deal.
Founded in 2015, Qfix is a cloud-based platform that provides online integrated payments and billing services to companies in multiple sectors. It aims to solve billing and invoicing issues by creating robust workflow management solutions for merchants. The company claims to have more than 5,000 merchants on its platform, including educational and government institutions.
“Qfix’s innovations through their smart invoicing and billing tools will help us offer a complete merchant payments and commerce platform through Plural,” Amrish Rau, chief executive of Pine Labs, said.
Last year, Pine Labs also acquired Kuala Lumpur-based payments and discovery platform Fave in an all-cash deal worth $45 million. With the acquisition, the company planned to enter the consumer payments space in India, riding on the unified payments interface. It was also looking to launch loyalty-based payments for Indian consumers. In March 2019, it had acquired gift card technology startup Qwikcilver for $110 million.
Last week, ET reported that Pine Labs was in advanced talks to acquire API-based infra company Setu in a cash-and-equity deal worth $70-100 million. The acquisition for getting access to Setu’s account aggregator consent framework and to improve the time-to-market in the launch of several financial services.
On January 10, ET reported that Pine Labs has filed for a ‘confidential’ initial public offering (IPO) worth $500 million with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The company, which is expected to make its market debut in the US later this year, may seek a valuation between $6 billion and $7 billion.
Source: Economic Times