BusinessLine
 
To empower the underbanked with no cost EMI offers
 
Pine Labs, a merchant commerce platform, has partnered with AU Small Finance Bank, the country’s largest small finance bank. With this partnership, the bank’s credit cardholders will now be able to avail of equated monthly instalments (EMI) offers at the point of sale and convert their regular purchase into interest-free EMIs across the over 2 lakh merchant base of Pine Labs, pan India.
 
Currently, Pine Labs powers more than 30 different credit issuers and NBFC partners on its Android PoS terminals. The collaboration between the two entities is expected to benefit the large underbanked population of India. In fact, about 55-60 per cent of customers of the AU Small Finance Bank are first-time credit cardholders with a presence across the west, north, and central parts of India and prominent Tier 3 and 4 cities.
 
Kush Mehra, Chief Business Officer, Pine Labs, said, “Consumer sentiment in India has improved to a great degree in recent times. We believe there is a lot of pent-up demand in the market, especially from the aspirational middle class. Thrilled to be partnering with AU Small Finance Bank who have a strong presence in the semi-urban and rural areas which we believe will be the next pocket of growth for India’s retail sector. We see great synergies for future growth in this evolving BNPL space as the Bank has done admirably well in getting over 80,000 credit card users in such a short span of time since launch and has ambitious targets for this fiscal.”
 
Mayank Markanday, Head of Credit Cards, AU Small Finance Bank, said, “The initial journey at AU Bank Credit Cards has been quite exciting. While we offered innovative benefits to the cardholders, the penetration into newer geographies provided an opportunity to serve a large segment of the un-carded customer base. Our association with Pine Labs will go a long way to fulfill various needs & aspirations of our customers by offering them affordable plans through Instant EMIs at partner merchant stores.”
 
Pine Labs is expanding its ‘Buy Now Pay Later’ offering to international markets as well and recently partnered with Standard Chartered Malaysia to offer zero-interest instalment purchase options to the bank’s customers.