ShardLab, the fintech venture arm of investment firm Hashed, has invested in Kuala Lumpur-headquartered commerce and payments platform StoreHub.
The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
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Alongside the investment, ShardLab and StoreHub will establish a joint venture aimed at developing new consumer payments and rewards experiences for merchants and customers across Southeast Asia.
StoreHub offers commerce and payments tools for retail and food and beverage businesses. The company operates in Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Japan.
It supports more than 20,000 merchant locations and processes over 200 million transactions annually, with a combined value of nearly $3.5bn, according to a statement.
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.”
The companies said Southeast Asia is a priority market for the collaboration. They cited a large population with limited access to traditional financial services, high mobile usage and a young demographic profile as factors behind the focus.
Under the joint venture, the companies plan to test new models with merchants and consumers before expanding further.
Subsequently, they intend to scale offerings “only what demonstrably works”, the statement added.
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.”
