We used to be just a smart-card-based payment and loyalty-solutions provider for the petroleum sector. From there, we evolved to become a merchant platform company that provides a suite of offerings which increase the efficiency of merchants, our clients, and improve their customer experience. Essentially, through our platform, merchants can manage their risk, carry out multi-channel analytics, avail working-capital loans, offer insurance to their customers, and also run brand offers and cashbacks.
Our ‘myPlutus app’ helps merchants to get real-time access to sales-transaction data, payments-related insights, and customer analytics. These powerful analytics, with real-time marketing tools and automated customer-engagement programs, help our clients to increase sales and drive repeat buying behaviour.
In addition, we recently opened our Android and payment gateway APIs for developers. We believe that this will spur community innovation, which will eventually help our merchants to serve their customers better. Today, over 100,000 merchants in India and Malaysia use the Pine Labs platform.
Electronic payment systems have changed in a big way from the traditional way in which payments were made in India. In fact, new payment systems are evolving at breakneck speed. Demonetisation had a huge role in fast-tracking this process, but regulators have also played a pivotal role in the development of India’s payments and settlement systems for both large-value and retail payments. New technology based offerings have changed the entire dynamic of the payments industry – a few good examples of these would be one-click payments, e-wallets, and UPIs.
We believe that to ensure long-term relevance, good payments services must serve the interests of consumers and merchants and at the same time they must be beneficial to issuers and OEMs. Plus, merchant needs are more advanced now than they were a decade ago. Our clients expect more than just a payments solution, they need to respond ‘just in time’ and efficiently to customer demands and electronic payments solutions have evolved to oblige. For banks and OEMs, these solutions have ensured that payments and settlements are safe, efficient, inter-operable, authorized, accessible, inclusive, and compliant with international standards.
India has been what I would like to call a ‘cash-obsessed’ economy. While demonetisation did provide a head start in changing this behaviour, Indians have also embraced digital payments driven by an increase in internet penetration, mushrooming of e-commerce companies, and spread of digital wallets. With a proliferation of smartphones and the advent of other digital payment options, more Indians are transacting through their mobiles. However, it is worth noting that even today 50% of micro-transactions under Rs 100 are done in cash and cash-in-circulation has surpassed pre-demonetisation levels. All this proves that there is huge room for electronic payments in this country, especially when the regulator is taking definitive steps to help transform the economy to a less-cash one.
Our country has set an ambitious target of 10-times growth in the volume of digital payments in three years . To achieve this, migrating smaller merchants to digital payments is the key. For this, acceptance of digital payments among merchants needs to improve, for which financial services companies need to create and refine existing solutions. One of the key enablers of digital transactions is the deeper penetration of point-of-sale terminals. We are a merchant centric organisation, and we understand that this will be possible only if we design products that even a not-so-tech-savvy shop owner can use to run his shop efficiently. The format needs to be simple and the cost of infrastructure has to be small. Our Android-based platform allows merchants to accept multiple forms of payments and enhance their customers’ shopping experience using just their smartphone. They can also offer instant EMIs on debit and credit cards and Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC) to help international travellers to pay in local currency, all of which adds to customer convenience.
I also believe that it is important to educate the 500-600mn consumers based out of tier 2 and tier 3 cities in India about digital payments, and create a sense of trust about this mode.
We are a merchant-focussed company committed to investing in technology and innovation. Along with this, we have a very strong ‘feet-on-street’ model, which ensures that our offerings are designed to recognise merchant issues and their evolving needs. Merchants that use our PoS machines can offer to their customers the convenience of making payments through more than 100 modes. To cater to their working capital and inventory needs, we now offer same-day settlements and also short-term (0-90 days) financing.
By partnering with leading NBFCs, we are able to offer (big and small merchants) access to easy collateral-free business loans, which they can repay as their business grows by choosing a flexible amount from daily card sales on their Pine Labs’ point-of-sale terminal. We are the first company in India to offer debit-card EMIs in offline stores, which enables merchants to offer ‘affordability’ solutions to their customers.
We partner leading acquirers, issuers, and financiers to expand their reach to more customers through our merchants. Over 21 financial-services institutions and 100 top global brands are part of our fast-growing network.
Rising income levels have led to rising aspirations among Indian consumers. While 100mn people (out of India’s 300-400mn-strong middle-class population) currently live in tier-2 and 3 cities , only 10% of Indians accessed formal borrowing as compared to nearly 90% citizens in developed economies . With more than 900mn debit cards in circulation, enabling EMIs on debit cards will help incentivize purchases through debit cards, effectively helping move consumers to a digital platform.
Just to give you an idea of our reach – we have built a network of over 100 brands and 19 banks and financial services organizations to power EMI transactions for customers via credit and debit cards for 85,000 merchants across 120,000 stores in India.
Our debit EMI offering business grew by over 500% in April-June 2019, fuelled by a special campaign we and our partners ran for air conditioners. We want to partner with other industry segments such as furniture and home decor, sports fitness and outdoors, education, healthcare and automobiles to help customers avail easy affordability solutions.
Qwikcilver continues to expand the gift- and stored-value cards market in South Asia and South East Asia. It is also venturing into non-Asian markets. Gift- and stored-value cards continue to be a high growth area for Pine Labs and we are investing in new products as well as on upgrading existing ones.
Our plan is to continue developing our merchant platform, and adding more products and offering for our merchants. We will increase partnerships with brands and OEMs, so that merchants can offer affordability to more consumers. We will continue to strengthen partnerships with acquirers and issuers in countries that we are present in, and the ones where we plan to enter. We have plans to expand into new Asian markets. We will also be strengthening our gifting, lending, and loyalty offerings.
Federal Bank recently partnered with us to enable debit-card EMIs for their customers. This will allow 5.7mn Federal Bank debit-card holders to instantly avail loans on EMIs at Pine Labs’ terminals.
Subscribe to enjoy uninterrupted access
