Pine Labs onboards new Qwikcilver CBO, expands pay later service in Southeast Asia

Merchant ecommerce solutions provider Pine Labs on Thursday said it has appointed Dheeraj Chowdhry as the chief business officer (CBO) of its subsidiary Qwikcilver.

Chowdhry brings over two decades of banking sector experience and is responsible for driving Qwikcilver’s Stored Value as well as the pay later service units in Southeast Asia, according to a statement.

He has expertise in both consumer and commercial banking, having led domains and functions in organisations such as Standard Chartered, ABN AMRO, Royal Bank of Scotland, ANZ Bank and American Express across India, Singapore, and Hong Kong. 

Before joining Pine Labs, Chowdhry was the CEO of Funding Societies, a Southeast Asian peer-to-peer financing platform. According to his LinkedIn profile, he left Funding Societies in July 2020 and joined Pine Labs a month later.

Commenting on the developments, B. Amrish Rau, CEO at Pine Labs, said, “The Southeast region is an extremely strategic part of our expansion plans. We are delighted with the response since we pioneered the Stored Value and Gift Card category in Southeast Asian markets including Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesian markets with our strategic partnerships over the last two years. With Dheeraj onboard, we are bullish of faster growth with the banking segment too.”

In a bid to make digital payments more convenient, Pine Labs has also expanded its ‘buy now pay later’ service in the Southeast Asia region.

The company announced the plan to expand offering late last year. Pine Labs, in partnership with  Mastercard, is now making the solution available in five key markets in the region-- Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam, Singapore and Indonesia. 

The service, already available in India and Malaysia, allows consumers to avail easy EMIs on purchases while also expanding the business for merchants, banks, fintech, payment gateways and device makers.

Founded in 1998 and incorporated in Singapore, Pine Labs currently serves more than 150,000 merchants in 3,700 cities with over 450,000 touchpoints across Asia and the Middle East. The company’s investors include Actis Capital, Mastercard, PayPal, Sequoia India, and Temasek.