Powering Payments: The Story of Pine Labs CEO Amrish Rau.

Amrish Rau is the kind of fintech leader who quietly moved into India’s payments world and then rewrote the rules. He joined Pine Labs as CEO in March 2020 after running Citrus Pay (which he later sold to PayU) and overseeing PayU India. Under his leadership Pine Labs has shifted from being just a point-of-sale terminal provider to building a full-stack payments and commerce platform.

At the heart of Rau’s vision was building a modern, cloud-first payments ecosystem. He believed that Pine Labs, a company founded in 1998, already had the network of merchants but needed to bring in scalable technology to power both offline and online payments. One of his first big moves was acquiring Qwikcilver, a gift-card startup, making that business a major revenue driver.

Rau also pushed Pine Labs to enter online payments. The company launched “Plural,” its payment-gateway service, to process transactions for large brands and smaller merchants alike. His goal: make online payments account for roughly 20 percent of Pine Labs’ revenue. When Plural began, it processed around US$380 million in monthly transactions; Rau projected that to grow ten- to fifteen-fold in two years. Clients that came on board early included big names like Samsung India and Apple resellers.

Under Rau, Pine Labs also went for global expansion. He has spoken about taking the company’s payment technology to markets like Southeast Asia, the Middle East and more. This international presence is backed by a growing team abroad: hundreds of Pine Labs employees are now based outside India, helping scale its merchant-commerce platform globally.

Rau’s time at the top has also coincided with Pine Labs becoming more than a payments company. The business now includes Buy-Now-Pay-Later (BNPL), invoice-management tools, loyalty and gift-card services all tailored for merchants. Analysing his strategy, industry players have noted that Rau built “a massive network among retailers,” strengthening Pine Labs’ position in physical commerce while pushing the boundaries into digital.

He has also managed to steer the company through tough times. When the pandemic hit soon after he joined, Rau led aggressively: Pine Labs hired new salespeople, doubled down on merchant onboarding, and grew its payment terminal footprint dramatically.

Now, as Pine Labs gears up for a major IPO, Rau’s role is more central than ever. He has just been made Chairman and Managing Director (in addition to remaining CEO), underlining how much the board trusts his long-term vision. He says the IPO funds would go toward cloud infrastructure, expanding its digital checkout points, and scaling its overseas operations.

For entrepreneurs watching the Indian startup ecosystem, Rau’s story is rich with lessons. From scaling hardware business to building full-stack fintech products, he shows how leadership in payments today is not about just terminals it is about building a merchant-first platform that moves as fast as the digital economy.