Merchant payments and lending platform Pine Labs has acquired fintech infrastructure startup Setu for around $70 million.
With this acquisition, Pine Labs continues to strengthen its diversified online payment lending offering and advances its plans to list in the United States.
According to the company statement, the founders of Setu will continue to lead the company and the brand name and will retain Setu’s 90-100 employee team.
Read also – [Funding alert] Agritech platform WayCool raises $40 mn in funding
The Bangalore-based Setu was founded in 2018 by Nikhil Kumar and Sahil Kini, It provides API (Application Program Interface) integration for fintech players to work closely with regulated entities like banks, NBFCs and others.
This is the third acquisition for Pine Labs in this year. Recently it took a majority stake in payment solutions provider Mosambee in April and acquired online-based payments firm Qfix in February for an undisclosed amount.
Commenting on the announcement, B Amrish Rau, CEO, Pine Labs, said “Setu will make an incredible addition to the Pine Labs platform for a few reasons. Embedded financial services and open banking are going to be the way forward and the embedded finance market value is expected to exceed US $138 bn by 2026 as APIs are intensifying the competitive fintech landscape. Setu helps their customers, merchants, and brands build beautiful experiences, so consumers can engage with payments and financial services on their terms. We are in the golden phase of digitisation in India, and Setu is a pioneer in supporting innovation on the India stack – their work on UPI and in the account aggregator space is moving the industry forward. Lastly, Setu is a team of builders and entrepreneurs, and together with the Pine Labs team will tackle hard problems to solve in the ecosystem. We are more than delighted to welcome the co-founders Nikhil and Sahil and their young and vibrant team to the Pine Labs family.”
Delhi-based Pine Labs was founded in 1998 by Lokvir Kapoor, it is a merchant payments and lending platform. In the last one year, it has taken a comprehensive approach and is expanding its geographical presence.
Read also –[Funding alert] SaaS startup LeadSquared join unicorn club with $153 mn in funding
Its main payment offering is point of sale (PoS) machines for offline payments, but the firm also forayed into online payments with the launch of its payment gateway platform Plural in October 2021.
In addition, it also expanded its Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) offering in Southeast Asia and entered the consumer payments space with the acquisition of Fave in April 2021.
“We are excited with this investment coming from Pine Labs. At Setu, we are building some amazing products and enabling a future of consent-driven access to financial data. We believe democratization of technology will yield better results when it comes to making financial products accessible to all and therefore have our APIs open for the developer community. Pine Labs’ network of merchants and issuers coupled with our API integration prowess will help achieve great results in personal finance management, monitoring loans to predict default rates, credit underwriting, and several other areas,” said Sahil Kini, Co-founder and CEO at Setu.
Since its inception, Pine Labs had raised at a total of over $1.2 billion in fundingtill date.
Recently in March, Pine Labs had raised $50 million in funding from London’s private equity major Vitruvian Partners at a valuation of over $5 billion.
About Pine Labs
Pine Labs is a leading merchant commerce omnichannel platform operating across India and Southeast Asia. Pine Labs’ tech-first approach to digital payments and focus on simplification at the front end aims to help many businesses embrace fintech products at scale.
Their deep technology is designed to empower businesses and fuel their entrepreneurial spirit. They build and host a roster of fintech products, from digital payments to loyalty solutions. Their cloud-based software, Plural, delivers secure and frictionless online payments to support businesses. Qwikcilver, a go-to gift card provider, caters to corporates by issuing closed-loop gift cards for customer acquisition. Fave, a fintech platform for the next generation of consumers, also enables merchants to grow and engage their customers with loyalty solutions.
Incorporated in Singapore, their key investors include Sequoia India, Actis Capital, Temasek, PayPal, and Mastercard.
About Setu
Setu’s APIs and software is used by hundreds of businesses to reimagine onboarding, payments, deposits, lending, and data empowerment for their end customers.
Setu empowers businesses and developers to reimagine financial products for the next billion users. They build low-cost, modular API infrastructure so that you can go live with a fintech product or service in a matter of days, not months.
