Fave announces undisclosed investment from India's Pine Labs to accelerate SEA’s cashless future

• Working together to expand cashless solutions to offline SMEs & enterprises
• 50,000 merchants in SEA will benefit immediately from the partnership

Fave, Southeast Asia's fast growing, Malaysian-based, merchant loyalty platform providing QR payments and Loyalty Cashback to restaurant and retailers, has announced a strategic partnership and undisclosed investment from Pine Labs Pvt. Ltd, a Mastercard backed India-based digital payments and merchant commerce platform. The investment was made into Fave Group Pte Ltd, the Singapore registered holding company of Fave. Prior to this, Fave raised a Series B round of US$20 million (RM85 million) in 2018.

[Para updated with additional information.]

Under the terms of the partnership, Fave’s QR code will become interoperable and integrated with Pine Lab’s terminals, enabling a single, safe, and seamless platform for digital payments and loyalty solutions in Southeast Asia (SEA).

Fave’s merchant payment acceptance and loyalty cashback solutions will expand into both debit and credit cards platforms via Pine Labs payment terminals. Merchants working with Pine Labs in SEA will also gain access to Fave’s loyalty solutions and reward their customers with cashback. They will also be able to enjoy consolidation of payments and gain access to transparent reporting, payment reconciliation, customer insights and demographic data via access to Fave’s digital dashboard, Favebiz.

Nearly 50,000 of Fave’s and Pine Labs’ merchants in SEA will benefit immediately from the partnership. The collaboration aims to scale and grow more businesses digitally in the coming months. Fave will also be receiving funding from Pine Labs as part of the partnership.

Fave’s cofounder and CEO, Joel Neoh (pic, above), said, “The partnership brings together great understanding and expertise in technology development to help support merchants through successful business transformations,” said Joel. “With digitalisation playing an increasingly critical role in the recovery of SEA’s economy, merchants recognise that they need to accelerate the development of digital solutions to ensure they remain competitive. We will work with Pine Labs to further strengthen Fave’s mission of helping merchants adapt to and digitalise in the new normal.”

Fave’s collaboration Pine Labs is an extension of its ongoing focus on working with major banks, fintech firms and e-wallets in Singapore and Malaysia via SGQR, Paynet and DuitNow QR to bring about customer loyalty solutions to the broader payments ecosystem. The collaboration is also crucial in furthering each company’s market positioning and value proposition in SEA. Fave has a long working history with merchants in the SME space, while Pine Labs’ merchants hail from enterprise and larger merchant organisations.

B Amrish Rau (pic), CEO, Pine Labs, said, “We’re excited to invest in Fave and partner with their leadership to provide integrated merchant commerce in Southeast Asia. Fave’s expertise in operating merchant loyalty programmes and the QR space and our own expertise in providing payments, loyalty and gift solutions will help merchants in the region navigate expansion in the post Covid-19 world.” 

SEA’s post-pandemic recovery has started with specific sectors such as automotive sales and F&B reporting business recovery and pent-up demand from customers. According to a recent study by Mastercard’s Impact Studies, there has been a notable decrease in cash usage since the start of the pandemic. The Asia Pacific region is leading the surge in digital payments with the majority of consumers believing it is the cleaner, safer way to pay with Malaysia leading in mobile wallet usage in SEA. 91% of those surveyed reported that they are now using tap-and-go payments.

With cashless payment adoption accelerating exponentially amongst consumers, the partnership between Fave and Pine Labs seeks to support this recovery by harnessing the strength of their fintech capabilities in providing holistic QR and card payment solutions to merchants.