ShardLab, a fintech venture studio backed by global investment firm Hashed, has made a strategic investment in StoreHub, one of Southeast Asia's leading commerce and payments platforms. The two companies also announced a joint venture to explore new consumer payment and rewards experiences for merchants and consumers across the region. The investment amount was not disclosed, but the collaboration marks a notable step toward connecting frontier financial technology with a large real-world merchant network.
StoreHub Discloses Regional Scale
StoreHub operates across Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Japan, serving more than 20,000 merchant locations throughout the region. The platform processes over 200 million transactions annually, representing approximately US$3.5 billion in annual transaction value. This announcement marks the first time StoreHub has publicly disclosed the full scale of its regional commerce and payments network.
A Joint Venture for New Payment Experiences
ShardLab and StoreHub will form a joint venture to develop consumer payment and rewards models that can be tested directly with real merchants and consumers. The joint venture structure allows both companies to launch specific products and initiatives only when they are ready to be scaled. Further details of these products will be announced at the time of their launch.
Leadership Perspectives
StoreHub CEO Wai Hong Fong said the company has spent more than a decade building commerce and payments infrastructure used daily by merchants across Asia. He noted that ShardLab and Hashed have been at the forefront of payments and rewards technology, and that any product built together must help merchants sell more. Fong also highlighted StoreHub's ongoing shift toward artificial intelligence so that a small restaurant team can operate with the capability of a much larger one.
ShardLab CEO Hojin Kim said the partnership gives the company something fundamentally different, namely a distribution network of more than 20,000 real-world merchant locations. He explained that ShardLab has spent recent years testing how new payment and rewards technologies can improve everyday consumer experiences. Kim said the collaboration is about moving from pilots to scale and building products that create measurable value for both consumers and merchants.
Connecting Frontier Technology to Commerce
ShardLab was established through a strategic partnership between Hashed and SCBX, one of Thailand's largest financial groups. Its focus is building and commercializing products at the intersection of frontier technologies and financial services, including programmable loyalty and rewards infrastructure. The partnership with StoreHub connects that work to a scaled commerce network for the first time.
Southeast Asia provides a strong environment for this collaboration because it combines a large population underserved by traditional financial services with widespread mobile usage and a young demographic. These conditions support the testing of new payment and rewards models in real-world settings. The joint venture is designed to scale only what demonstrably works.
StoreHub's Platform and AI Ambitions
StoreHub is headquartered in Kuala Lumpur and provides point-of-sale, payments, loyalty and online ordering solutions for retail and food and beverage businesses. Its platform is designed to be powerful and user-friendly while helping small teams operate with larger capabilities through artificial intelligence. The company's mission is to make it simple for anyone to build a successful business.
The strategic investment and joint venture align ShardLab's expertise in Web3, payments and rewards with StoreHub's established regional commerce network. Both companies see the partnership as a way to move from isolated technology pilots to measurable impact across thousands of merchant locations. As specific products launch, the collaboration could offer Southeast Asian merchants and consumers more accessible and rewarding payment experiences.