Pine Labs, Standard Chartered Malaysia Debut BNPL Offering

Indian FinTech firm Pine Labs on Wednesday (Nov. 17) announced it has partnered with Standard Chartered Malaysia on a buy now, pay later (BNPL) offering that includes 0% installments on credit cards at the more than 25,000 merchants across Malaysia equipped with Pine Labs point of sale (POS) terminals.

Pine Labs launched its BNPL services in Malaysia in March after the offering debuted in India.

“We are very excited to partner with Standard Chartered to provide their customers unique affordability solutions,” Chayan Hazra, head of payment business, APAC at Pine Labs, said in the announcement. “Traditionally, the focus of banks has been mainly towards consumer electronics and home improvement due to the big-ticket purchases in these categories for BNPL.

“Now with the changing consumer shift towards a need for every possible saving opportunity during checkout, newer categories are fast-emerging,” he said. “Our partnership with Standard Chartered will offer their customers the opportunity to do just that. We are also planning to periodically roll out other important value-added services like cashbacks and discounts for the Bank’s credit card customers.”

BNPL payment adoption in Malaysia is expected to grow through 2028 at a CAGR of 33.2%, according to a report by Research and Markets.

“The pandemic has affected many Malaysians, and as we are now getting back to normalcy, this collaboration with Pine Labs on BNPL solutions would connect our customers to a wider ecosystem of merchants to provide a flexible and manageable way to cope with purchases or paying bills,” Sammeer Sharma, head of consumer, private and business banking at Standard Chartered Malaysia, said in the announcement.

“This is in line with the Bank’s commitment to improve product access, financial inclusion and value-added services to our clients,” he said.

Related: Report: India’s Pine Labs is Weighing IPO

Last month, Pine Labs Chief Executive Amrish Rau said the company may go public next year because of opportunities in digital payments. The company is valued at about $3.5 billion and is backed by investors including Sequoia Capital, PayPal, Mastercard and Singapore’s Temasek and generates up to $35 billion annually.

Also read: Indian Merchant Commerce Platform Pine Labs Eyes $1B IPO

Pine Labs is eyeing an initial public offering (IPO) on Nasdaq and is looking to raise as much as $1 billion ahead of going public. Pine Labs hired Morgan Stanley to manage the proposed initial share sale.