ShardLab, the FinTech venture studio backed by global investment firm Hashed, has taken a strategic stake in StoreHub, a Southeast Asian commerce and payments platform, as the companies launch a joint venture focused on developing new payment and rewards products.
The partnership will allow the companies to develop and test new products across StoreHub’s existing merchant network, with concepts that demonstrate demand potentially scaled across the region. The companies have not yet disclosed details of the specific products they plan to launch.
StoreHub provides point-of-sale, payments, loyalty and online ordering technology to more than 20,000 merchant locations across Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Japan. Its platform processes more than 200 million transactions annually, representing approximately $3.5bn in transaction value.
That existing infrastructure gives ShardLab access to a large base of merchants and consumers through which new payment and loyalty propositions can be tested outside of small-scale pilots.
The partnership comes as Southeast Asia’s payments market continues to develop, with mobile adoption and a young population creating opportunities for digital financial products. The companies believe the region’s relatively underserved consumer base could provide an environment for new payment and rewards propositions to gain traction.
For StoreHub, the deal also supports its wider investment in artificial intelligence. The Kuala Lumpur-based company is rebuilding elements of its platform around AI, with the aim of helping smaller businesses automate more of their operations.
StoreHub CEO Wai Hong Fong 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.”
For ShardLab, the investment provides a route to move its payments and rewards technology from experimental projects into products with access to an established commercial network.
ShardLab CEO Hojin Kim 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.”
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