New Delhi, Dec 21 (IANS): Merchant commerce platform Pine Labs on Monday announced it has raised a fresh round of funding from Lone Pine Capital, taking its valuation to over $2 billion.

The company, however, did not disclose the amount of fresh investment.

Lone Pine's investment follows the strategic investment made by Mastercard in January 2020, when Pine Labs was declared a unicorn.

Earlier in December, Pine Labs and Mastercard jointly announced that they will expand their integrated "pay later" solution to five South East Asian markets early next year.

"Small businesses and consumers are fast adopting to digital commerce and contactless checkout. We are also seeing tremendous uptake in Pay Later services and have now enabled nearly 150,000 outlets for this. It's time to invest heavily in offline and online commerce across India and SEA," said B. Amrish Rau, CEO, Pine Labs.

Pine Labs currently serves more than 150,000 merchants in 3,700 cities across Asia and the Middle East.

In July 2020, the company made a strategic investment in Fave (myfave.com).

Together, the companies now provide cashless payment solutions to over 50,000 merchants across Malaysia, Singapore and other South East Asian countries, Pine Labs said in a statement.

"The Pine Labs team is leveraging key structural changes, including the integration of software and payments at the point-of-sale, the digitisation of small-to-medium enterprises, and the rapid adoption of buy-now-pay-later offerings. We look forward to the road ahead," said Mala Gaonkar, Portfolio Manager and Managing Director at Lone Pine.

Incorporated in Singapore, Pine Labs' key investors include Sequoia India, Mastercard, Actis Capital, Temasek and PayPal.