Pine Labs partners with ICICI Bank to enable eRupee

Leading merchant commerce omnichannel platform, Pine Labs today announced the acceptance of digital Rupee on its PoS terminals in partnership with ICICI Bank. The technology integration between the two entities will now support e₹ (Digital Rupee) acceptance at Pine Labs’ point-of-sale terminals across key retail outlets in Mumbai and Bengaluru.

Pine Labs’ execution of the Digital Rupee payment process is completely digital via dynamic QR built within its smart Android PoS terminals.

B Amrish Rau, CEO, Pine Labs, said, “CBDC and Digital Rupee opens up exciting opportunities. If implemented correctly, it can accelerate the migration from paper-based currency to digital. Pine Labs is happy to partner with ICICI Bank in launching CBDC as a payment option under this pilot run by the RBI.”

Mr. Bijith Bhaskar, Head – Digital Channels and Partnerships, ICICI Bank, said, “The introduction of CBDC or Digital Rupee is a historic milestone in the digital journey of India. India is among the select few countries globally to have its own digital currency. The Digital Rupee, which is a tokenised digital version of the Indian Rupee, is a resilient, safe and additional avenue to users for making payments. Increased acceptance of Digital Rupee would hasten its adoption among customers. We are delighted to partner with Pine Labs to make Digital Rupee an accepted payment mode at their merchant PoS terminals. This would present a seamless payment option to the users and improve the operational efficiency of merchants with Pine Labs PoS terminals.”

RBI’s Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) pilot for both person-to-person (P2P) and person-to-merchant (P2M) digital Rupee transactions is currently live with leading banks like State Bank of India, ICICI Bank, Yes Bank, IDFC First Bank, Union Bank of India, Bank of Baroda, Kotak Mahindra Bank, and HDFC Bank.

This controlled retail CBDC pilot is expected to expand to more banks, users, and locations, in addition to more applications. Once formally introduced pan India as a legal tender, Digital Rupee is expected to deliver reduction in operational costs that goes into the management of physical cash, improve financial inclusion, and deliver resilience and efficiency in payment transactions.

Incorporated in Singapore, the key investors of Pine Labs include Sequoia India, Actis Capital, Temasek, PayPal and Mastercard. The company had reported revenues of Rs. 1,017 Cr for FY 21-22 with losses of Rs. 259.1 Cr. Pine Labs, founded by Amrish Rau has raised USD 1.2 Bn till date over 12 rounds and counts Blackrock, Fidelity, Kotak Mahindra Bank, SBIand Invesco among its key investors. The company acquired FAVE app which faciliates digital financial transactions in 2020 and exited in 2022.