Pine Labs acquires consumer fintech startup Fave for $45M

Pine Labs announced that the company has acquired Southeast Asian consumer fintech startup Fave for $45 million. 

Fave provides a platform for offline merchants to connect and retain customers by using gift cards and vouchers. The fintech startup allows dealers to take payments digitally via scanning QR code. When the customer makes the payment, the customer will get cashback or points, which can be redeemed at that specific business in the next transactions. 

Fave operates in 35 cities across Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia and would available for Indian consumers later this year. The Fave founders will manage the overall consumer platform across Asia and hire over 100 new employees. To date, Fave has enabled 6 million consumers in Southeast Asia to save over $400 million across 40,000 retailers since 2016. 

“Fave helps consumers apply their best rewards, coupons, gift cards and cashbacks on all transactions in a seamless manner. We are excited to partner with them in this journey in South East Asia and India,” said B. Amrish Rau, CEO, Pine Labs.

“We are confident that the APAC e-payments landscape will continue to achieve exponential growth in the coming decade. Together, we will be stronger, faster and better,” said Joel Neoh, Co-Founder and CEO of Fave.

The acquisition will help both organizations accelerate their growth in the Asia region and unlock tremendous consumer opportunities across retail, F&B, fashion, and FMCG businesses.

Pine Labs said that Fave’s investors would receive an all-cash payout, while founders and key Fave employees will get cash and Pine Labs shares.

With this acquisition, Indian consumers would be able to use Fave app later this year to save across 500,000 merchant network points powered by Pine Labs across 3,700 cities. 

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