Merchant commerce platform Pine Labs has acquired Southeast Asian fintech platform Fave in a transaction worth about $45 million.

“The acquisition will assist both companies to accelerate their growth in the Asia region and unlock massive consumer opportunities across retail, F&B, fashion, and FMCG markets. Joining forces with Pine Labs will reinforce Fave’s market position in Southeast Asia,” the companies stated.

Fave’s founders will have their roles expanded to lead the overall consumer platform for the group across Asia. Fave will also be hiring over many new employees in Southeast Asia (SEA) and India to accelerate cashless payments and smart savings across the region. The firm claims to have enabled 6 million consumers in SEA to save over $400 million across 40,000 retailers since 2016.

“Consumers have tremendous choices in their payment types. They want to be sure that they save on every transaction. Fave assist consumers apply their best rewards, coupons, gift cards and cashback on all transactions in a seamless manner,” stated B Amrish Rau, CEO at Pine Labs.

Indian consumers will be able to make use of the Fave app later this year to save across 500,000 merchant network points powered by Pine Labs across 3,700 cities in the country. The app will be introduced across all major Indian cities.

Pine Labs stated that the introduction of the Fave app in the country comes at a time when UPI has grown to 2.7 billion transactions. Pine Labs insist to have recorded a growth of 171% in UPI transactions over the last two quarters.

The acquisition of Fave by the Noida-based firm comes less than four months after it raised fresh funds from Lone Pine Capital at a valuation of over $2 billion. The company is understood to have raised anywhere between $75 million and $100 million in the financial round that included a mix of primary and secondary investment. In January last year, the firm turned unicorn after it bagged funding from MasterCard at a valuation of about $1.6 billion.

Founded in 1998, Pine Labs initially provided a solution for a card-based payment and loyalty programme in the retail petroleum industry. It pivoted its business model and forayed into the unified point-of-sale (POS) space since 2012.