India’s Pine Labs teams up with Atome to offer BNPL services in Malaysia

Indian fintech firm Pine Labs has partnered with Singapore-based Atome to launch buy now, pay later (BNPL) services in Malaysia.

Pine Labs aims to extend affordable BNPL services to a previously untapped segment under the partnership, saying it will enable a quicker, smoother, and seamless payment experience across thousands of point-of-sale checkouts in Malaysia.

“With Atome, we are able to open newer categories for affordability and bring in newer customer segments who might not be traditional credit card customers,” Chayan Hazra, head of Pine Labs’ Asia-Pacific payments business, said in a statement.

Trasy Lou Walsh, Atome’s general manager for Singapore and Malaysia / Photo credit: Pine Labs

Atome has partnerships with more than 3,000 online and offline retailers. It offers BNPL services across nine Asian markets, including Indonesia, Malaysia, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Taiwan, Vietnam, and mainland China.

In Malaysia, Atome has tie-ups with more than 200 online and offline merchants, including Zalora, Agoda, Aldo, Eu Yan Sang, Lego reseller Box of Bricks, and Apple products reseller Machines.

The collaboration comes on the heels of Pine Labs’ US$45 million acquisition of another Southeast Asian fintech platform, Fave.

Interestingly, Fave launched its own BNPL services in Malaysia last month. However, Fave operates in a different space, and the tie-up with Atome – one of the largest BNPL players in the country – will help Pine Labs grab a foothold in a new segment, the India-based merchant platform told Tech in Asia.

That said, Malaysia is witnessing an accelerated transition to digital payments owing to the Covid-19 pandemic. According to a ACI Worldwide and Global Data report, real-time payment transactions in Malaysia went past 68 million in 2020, a 9x jump from 7 million in 2019.

Pine Labs in a statement said that BNPL services were fast becoming a popular payment mode in Asia. Citing a 2021 report by FIS-Worldpay, it said that this payment mode would double its market share from 0.6% in 2020 to 1.3% by 2024.

In Malaysia, Pine Labs already works with top banks like CIMB Bank, AmBank, HSBC Bank, AFFIN BANK, and RHB Bank to facilitate its BNPL services.

Pine Labs, which provides financing and last-mile retail transaction services, this week raised US$600 million from the likes of Fidelity Management & Research Company and Tree Line.

In May, the merchant platform bagged US$285 million in a round that valued it at roughly US$3 billion. Some of its top investors include Sequoia India, Actis Capital, Temasek, PayPal, and Mastercard.