Aiming for $25 bn annual payments processed on Plural: Pine Labs CEO

Company says it now plans to disrupt the payments space through a suite of online payment products focused on speed, security, and user experience

Pine Labs, a leading merchant commerce platform, is targeting $25 billion annual payment volumes processed on its online payments platform Plural in the next 18 months. The firm launched Plural on Thursday, marking its entry into the online payments space.

“We intend to get to about $20-25 billion of annual (payment) volume processed on our (Plural)  platform,” B Amrish Rau, CEO, Pine Labs, said in an interview. “That's the expectation in the next 18 months.”

Backed by years of strong technological capabilities, the company said it now aims to reinvent the space through a suite of online payment products focused on speed, security, and user experience.

Rau said the company processes about $30 billion annual payment volume in the offline space. And Plural is a good opportunity for the firm to take its technology stack into the online world, and deliver its world-class APIs (application programming interface) and cloud infrastructure to merchants to provide seamless checkout to their consumers.

“Over the last 12 months, we've been investing heavily in this space,” said Rau. “We now have more than 100 people plus in this business.”

The firm said Plural is expected to disrupt the payments gateway space and make the offline-to-online transition easier for Pine Labs’ merchant base and other online businesses looking to tie-up with a company with a good track record in the payments ecosystem.

Plural is aimed towards merchants and enterprises looking to set up afresh or augment their existing online commerce business. The company is targeting online stores, big e-commerce companies, large-scale government institutions, and large financial services companies.

“Our strategy has been to start with merchants who are already working with us. We're deeply integrated with them in the offline world,” said Tanya Naik, head of online and omnichannel business at Pine Labs. “The other category is government, edu-tech and there are subscription billers and a lot of upcoming B2C brands where we also see Plural playing a very important role.  As these businesses scale up, we will also scale up with them.”

With Plural, Pine Labs is competing with players such as Razorpay, Paytm, PayU, BillDesk, CCAvenue and Cashfree Payments. Naik of Pine Labs said what differentiates Plural is that it comes with an integration that can work for a merchant who wants to go both offline and online.

“Our differentiation lies with the fact that it's coming from one stable which can do everything,” said Naik. “I don't think any of these players have such an offline suite of products like the way we do.”

Naik said what is also unique is that Plural has ‘pay later’ and ‘brand EMI’ capabilities.

“While everybody can acquire a credit or debit card and do UPI and net banking transactions, not everyone can create a truly seamless EMI and pay later experience,” said Naik.

Three key products announced under the Plural brand include: Plural Gateway, Plural Checkout, and Plural Console. Plural Gateway is a customisable payment gateway that allows payment acceptance via over 100 modes of payment which is also equipped to process Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) transactions. Plural Checkout is a Mobile SDK (Software Development Kit) intended to boost payment gateway performance for Android and iOS users. Plural Console is a Payment Orchestration Platform (POP) that offers a single tech framework to trigger transactions via multiple payment gateways.