Pine Labs acquires Fave in $45-mn deal
Fintech firm Pine Labs on Tuesday said it has acquired Fave, Southeast Asia’s fastgrowing consumer fintech platform, in a $45-million deal.
Malaysia-based Fave provides QR payments and loyalty cashback to restaurants and retailers. Indian consumers will be able to use the app later this year to save across 500,000 merchant network points powered by Pine Labs across 3,700 cities in India. It has enabled 6 million consumers in SEA to save over $400 million across 40,000 retailers since 2016.
“Consumers have tremendous choices in their payment types. They want to be sure that they save on every transaction,” said B Amrish Rau, CEO, Pine Labs. “Fave helps consumers apply their best rewards, coupons, gift cards and cashback on all transactions in a seamless manner.”
Fave’s founders will have their roles expanded to lead the overall consumer platform for the group across Asia. “Really excited to work with Amrish and the Pine Labs team to continue expanding the Fave platform across the Asia region,” said Joel Neoh, co-founder and CEO of Fave. “Pine Labs has been a great partner and investor for us, and it only made sense for us to join our synergies and work towards our shared vision of building a truly global consumer and merchant platform.”
Fave currently operates in 35 cities across Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. It will be rolled out across all major Indian cities. The introduction of the app in India comes at an opportune moment, with UPI (unified payments interface) growing to 2.7 billion transactions in March 2021. Pine Labs also recorded growth of 171 per cent in UPI transactions over the last two quarters. Last year, Pine Labs had made an investment and formed a strategic partnership with Fave.
Fave is the second acquisition for Pine Labs. In 2019, it acquired Amazon-backed Qwikcilver, a gift card technology start-up for $110 million. The combined gift solutions business that time became the largest in India with a customer base of over 250 brands and retailers and 1,500 enterprise customers.