Pine Labs posts first profit since debut with 18% revenue growth

Pine Labs reported a net profit of 5.97 crore rupees (US $716,400) in Q2 FY26, up from a loss of 32.01 crore rupees (US$3.8 million) a year earlier, as lower costs and margin gains improved its bottom line.

The India-based payments company, which listed on local stock exchanges last month, saw its revenue from operations rise 18% year-on-year to 649.9 crore rupees (US$78 million).

Total expenses increased by just over 8% to 661.7 crore rupees (US$79.4 million), while adjusted EBITDA more than doubled to 122 crore rupees (US$14.6 million), raising its margin to 19%.

The company cited higher profitability due to reduced depreciation and ESOP costs, along with a shift toward software-led offerings.

Pine Labs said it processed US$48.2 billion in gross transaction value during the quarter and handled 1.9 billion transactions, a 44% year-on-year increase.

🔗 Source: YourStory

🧠 Food for thought

Implications, context, and why it matters.

The software pivot claim needs validation against unit economics

Pine Labs credits profitability to “a shift toward software-led offerings.” Revenue rose 18% while transaction volume grew 44%, so a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) lift would push sales ahead. Issuing and acquiring made up 33% of Q2 sales, with richer spreads that may be the driver 1. Unit economics must confirm higher profit per transaction or per merchant independent of throughput.
The firm handled $48.2 billion in gross transaction value across 1.9 billion transactions, which implies $25 per transaction. With Rs 649.9 crore quarterly revenue, the take rate sits near 0.16% after rupee-to-dollar conversion. Without a split between software licensing and payment fees, investors cannot tell if margins came from uptake or one-off cuts such as lower depreciation and Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) charges 2.

ISVs can leverage Pine Labs’ merchant base through integration partnerships

With a 1 million merchant base up 29% year over year, Pine Labs opened in-store application programming interfaces (APIs) to developers so third parties can embed acceptance in their apps 13. That creates room for Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) players in inventory, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), or analytics to bundle payments.
Pine Labs has a developer portal with API docs and supports webhook-based updates, which are server-to-server callbacks that notify apps of events 45. Teams building Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) for Small and Medium-sized Businesses (SMBs) in retail or hospitality partner on unified commerce solutions (integrated online and in-store sales and payments) 1. They tap into 1.9 billion quarterly transactions while Pine Labs manages payment rails, the underlying networks and systems that move money, plus compliance.