Pine Labs, an IPO-bound digital payment and financial services provider, is in talks to buy Setu, an API-based infrastructure company, for $70- $100 million in cash and stock, according to three people familiar with the talks.
According to one of the people cited above, if the acquisition goes through, Pine Labs will gain access to Setu’s Account Aggregator consent framework and technology, which will help it improve market time for its planned financial services launch.
Financial service providers no longer need to make multiple integrations for a single feature thanks to Setu’s technology stack.
The acquisition comes at a time when Pine Labs is looking to expand its services beyond merchant payments. With the acquisition of Singapore-based loyalty payments startup Fave last year, the merchant-focused fintech took its first steps toward consumer offerings. Plural, a payment gateway, was also launched to assist new-age direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands accept digital and credit-linked payments.
“The due-diligence is underway and Setu’s board has also been apprised of the offer from Pine Labs. Currently, they (Pine Labs) have the exclusivity window for about a month,” a person briefed on the matter said.
Last year, the company planned to consolidate its gift card provider Qwikcilver and Fave acquisitions on its consumer platform in order to offer loyalty-based and ‘buy-now-pay-later’ solutions.
Setu is an API infrastructure company that allows banks and other financial institutions to launch financial services on its platform. It was founded in 2018. It also enables companies to bypass traditional loan assessment methods such as SMS readings, screen scrapings, and file uploads, allowing service providers to collect data without requiring consumer consent.
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