March 04, 2021

Pine Labs expands in Southeast Asia

New Delhi, 04 March 2021: Pine Labs, a leading merchant commerce platform in Asia, announced key organizational changes to further strengthen its growth opportunities, presence and its commitment to the region.

Pine Labs subsidiary, Qwikcilver has made significant progress in evangelising and pioneering the Prepaid Stored Value and Gift Card category in the Southeast Asian region over the last two years. The Qwikcilver Stored Value technology platform is now the most preferred Gift Card suite adopted by the leading organisations and networks in Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia. Some of the flagship enterprises, networks and brands that have deployed the Qwikcilver Stored Value technology suite include Lazada, CapitaLand, Frasers Group, PT. Mitra Adiperkasa (MAP Group), Indonesia amongst others. The Qwikcilver Stored Value product suite has been truly appreciated for its robustness and flexibility in streamlining the customer engagement initiatives of the brands & retailers of the rapidly evolving digital savvy consumers of the region.

In addition, Pine Labs has now expanded its Buy Now Pay Later technology offering into the Southeast Asian region with its strategic partnership with Mastercard. This will enable the rollout of the Buy Now Pay Later offering in the focus markets in the region.

In this regard, Pine Labs has appointed Dheeraj Chowdhry as Chief Business Officer, Qwikcilver to head the Stored Value and Buy Now Pay Later business in the Southeast Asia region. Dheeraj brings more than two decades of experience in Consumer and Commercial banking industry across India, Singapore, and Hong Kong having worked in organisations like Standard Chartered, ABN AMRO, Royal Bank of Scotland, ANZ Bank and American Express in leadership roles across domains and functions. In his last role as CEO of a digital lending SME platform he led the digital strategy development, execution, and enablement to remain agile and nimble and deliver a digital customer journey.

Commenting on the expansion plans, B. Amrish Rau, CEO, Pine Labs, said, “The South east region is an extremely strategic part of our expansion plans. We are delighted with the response since we pioneered the Stored Value & Gift Card category in Southeast Asian markets including Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesian markets with our strategic partnerships over the last two years. With Dheeraj onboard, we are bullish of faster growth with the Banking segment too.”

Dheeraj Chowdhry, Chief Business Officer, Qwikcilver, said, “I am very excited to be a part of the Pine Labs journey at a time when the company is increasing its focus & expanding into new segments in the Southeast Asian market. We intend to amplify the digital store value segment by using the capabilities of Qwikcilver solutions.”

Pine Labs serves more than 150,000 merchants in 3,700 cities with over 450,000 merchant touchpoints. In July 2020, Pine Labs had also announced an investment in Fave, a fast-growing fintech platform in Southeast Asia, to jointly offer cashless payment solutions to offline SMEs and enterprises in the region.

About Qwikcilver

Qwikcilver is the pioneer and single largest end-to-end service provider in the pre-paid, gift card space, serving the who's who of the retail and service industries in India, the Middle East, South East Asia and more recently, having entered the Australia & New Zealand region. Qwikcilver today, using its robust, secure, banking-standard, transaction management platform, powers 9 out of every 10 gift cards and e gift cards sold. For more information, please visit www.qwikcilver.com