Pine Labs, a fintech unicorn, has acquired Mumbai-based Qfix Infocomm, an online payments startup. While Pine Labs has not announced the financial details of the transaction, the acquisition is geared to strengthen the unicorn’s recently launched Plural platform and three products under it: Plural Checkout, Plural Gateway, and Plural Console.
This is Pine Labs’ third acquisition, following Singapore-based Fave and QwikCilver Solutions, as it tends to broaden its service portfolio. Qfix Infocomm, which was founded in 2015, provides online integrated payments as well as billing services offering merchants, consumers, and communities segment-specific digital payments and commerce solutions.
It has around 50 merchants on its platform, including educational institutions, governments, and clubs. Its primary distribution partner is HDFC Bank. Its education-focused platform, for example, offers seamless fee management, fee collection, reconciliation, an embedded online marketplace with students, and a bunch of other value-added services for these educational institutions.
Amrish Rau, CEO of Pine Labs, commented on the acquisition, saying, “As businesses look at ways to improve efficiency, everyday processes between suppliers and customers need an overhaul too. Qfix’s innovations through their smart invoicing and workflow management and billing tools would help offer a complete merchant payments and commerce platform through Plural.”
Qfix claims that its platform has been adopted by over 5,000 educational institutions across the country. It has also introduced a pilot offline-to-online and community marketplace solution with API plug-ins that can be leveraged across countless merchant segments including online ERP players, residential societies, and clubs as a turnkey solution to plugin and set up their own online stores and marketplaces with shopping cart for a standalone and a large network of merchants.
Venugopal Choudhary, Managing Director of Qfix Infocomm said, “I am confident this acquisition will further accelerate our growth momentum and help us service to the needs of multiple sectors requiring curated and innovative online payment solutions and commerce solutions that are secure, seamless, and speedier when it comes to execution.”
Pine Labs which is one of the leading merchant commerce platforms, has recently joined the online payments industry with a new vertical called ‘Plural,’ soon after acquiring Southeast Asia’s fintech firm Fave for $45 million. It seeks to process $25 billion in annual payment volumes (APV) through its online payments platform Plural during the next 18 months.
Pine Labs will be the fifth Indian fintech startup to go public, following Vijay Shekhar Sharma’s Paytm, Fino Payments Bank, insur-tech PolicyBazaar, Bipin Preet Singh’s MobiKwik (which is currently in the pre-IPO stage).