Malaysia — ShardLab, a fintech venture studio backed by investment firm Hashed, has invested in commerce and payments platform StoreHub as the companies establish a joint venture to explore new payment and rewards products for merchants and consumers in Southeast Asia.
StoreHub operates in Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Japan, serving more than 20,000 merchant locations. The company’s platform processes more than 200 million transactions annually, with a total transaction value of approximately US$3.5 billion.
The investment and joint venture will give the companies a platform to develop and test payment and rewards models with merchants and consumers in the region. The companies said specific products and initiatives will be announced as they launch.
ShardLab was established through a strategic partnership between Hashed and SCBX, a major Thai financial group, to develop and commercialise products at the intersection of emerging technologies and financial services.
The partnership with StoreHub provides ShardLab with access to an established merchant network as it explores applications for payments and rewards technology.
Southeast Asia has been identified by the companies as a key market for the partnership, citing the region’s large population, mobile usage and gaps in access to traditional financial services.
Wai Hong Fong, CEO of StoreHub, said, “StoreHub has spent over a decade building the commerce and payments infrastructure that merchants across Asia use to run their businesses every day. ShardLab and Hashed have spent years at the forefront of payments and rewards technology, and this partnership is about bringing that work to real merchants at scale.”
“Anything we build together must pass the same test that everything at StoreHub passes: does it help merchants sell more? The larger shift within StoreHub continues alongside this: we are rebuilding our product around AI, so that a three-person restaurant can operate with the capability of a thirty-person one,” he continued.
Hojin Kim, CEO of ShardLab, said, “We have spent the past few years testing how new payment and rewards technologies can improve everyday consumer experiences. StoreHub gives us something fundamentally different: a distribution network of more than 20,000 real-world merchant locations. This partnership is about moving from pilots to scale and building products that create measurable value for both consumers and merchants.”
