The Economics Times

BENGALURU: Point-of-sale payment solutions provider Pine Labs plans to launch its own wallet service, starting with gift cards, having received a prepaid payment instrument licence from the Reserve Bank of India in March. The licence is valid for five years.

The Sequoia Capital-backed company will offer gift card solutions to its retail merchants and is also planning to venture into meal vouchers, said CEO Lokvir Kapoor. "We are planning to launch our wallet this quarter. We will begin with gift cards," Kapoor said.

Other licence holders such as Amazon-backed Qwikcilver also offer gift cards, but Kapoor said Pine Labs products will come with unique variants. Pine Labs, which has deployed solutions at two lakh locations, has already signed up 20,000 merchants for the prepaid wallet service.

"We see our merchant base growing to 4 lakh this year. Wallet adoption will also grow proportionately," he said. "We don't want to launch a generic wallet and will focus on solutions and use cases. One of the biggest use cases for the wallet will be at retail outlets of oil companies, where majority of payments are still done in cash," Kapoor said.

"We want to position the product as a cash-management tool for these companies who can also use the wallet service for loyalty programmes."