How Pine Labs went from card machine operator to hot fintech

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Editor's note: A card payments processor more than two decades old is soon approaching the public markets as a sprightly fintech startup. Pine Labs could very well be the first Indian fintech company to list abroad. After taking over in March 2020, the company’s chief executive officer Amrish Rau has been on a war footing to restructure the management team and raise capital. A little over three weeks ago, he announced the close of a $600 million fundraise, from asset managers and funds such as Fidelity and BlackRock, as well as existing investors like Sequoia Capital, Temasek and Mastercard. The round valued Pine Labs at $3.5 billion and comes ahead of a planned stock listing in the US sometime next year, which could see it become the first Indian fintech company to go public overseas. The public markets—both in the US and in India—are on a high, and will probably continue in that vein till Pine Labs is ready to IPO. Tech stocks in particular are in extreme demand. Unlike most Indian fintech startups, though, Pine Labs has a solid core business—bread …