Hashed’s ShardLab backs StoreHub to launch integrated merchant rewards and payment solutions in Southeast Asia

Many small merchants in Southeast Asia treat payments and loyalty as separate problems, using distinct systems for sales, digital payments and customer retention. StoreHub and ShardLab are now exploring how to stitch these layers together more tightly.

Kuala Lumpur‑based StoreHub has received a strategic, undisclosed investment from ShardLab, a Singapore‑based venture studio that serves as the innovation arm of South Korean blockchain investor Hashed. The two companies will also form a joint venture to develop new payment and rewards products for merchants and consumers across the region. No financial details were disclosed.

StoreHub operates in more than 20,000 locations across Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Japan, processing over 200 million transactions yearly with a total transaction value of around US$3.5 billion. This gives ShardLab access to a real‑world distribution network that many technology‑focused firms struggle to obtain.

ShardLab was created through a partnership between Hashed and SCBX, one of Thailand’s largest financial groups, to build and commercialise products at the intersection of financial services and emerging technologies. Its focus includes programmable loyalty and rewards infrastructure—systems that can be automated, personalised, transferred or embedded into payment flows more flexibly than traditional point cards.

Consumer behaviour in Southeast Asia is fragmented. Customers may pay with cash, cards, bank transfers, QR codes or e‑wallets, often depending on the country, merchant type and transaction size. Loyalty programmes are equally scattered, ranging from paper stamp cards to app‑based points and marketplace promotions. While a restaurant chain or large retailer can manage this complexity, a neighbourhood café, salon or small F&B outlet usually finds it a distraction. StoreHub’s long‑standing pitch is to help these merchants run sales, payments and operations from a single system.

The investment suggests the next layer could be rewards and payments that are more closely tied to actual purchasing behaviour. StoreHub CEO Wai Hong Fong framed the partnership around merchant outcomes rather than technology for its own sake.

“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,” he said.

“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.”

That line points to a broader shift in commerce software. Merchants are no longer looking only for digital cash registers or payment acceptance. Increasingly, the question is whether software can help them forecast demand, manage staff, design promotions, reduce manual work and make better decisions without hiring more people.

Why StoreHub’s network matters

The joint venture gives StoreHub and ShardLab a controlled way to test new payment and rewards models with live merchants and consumers. The companies said specific products will be announced when they launch, rather than outlined upfront.

Southeast Asia has seen many loyalty experiments that were easy to announce and hard to sustain. Consumers may sign up for points, but many forget to redeem them. Merchants may offer discounts, but not always profitably. Web3‑linked rewards, in particular, have often struggled when the consumer experience feels more complicated than the benefit.

The more interesting opportunity is less about asking users to understand blockchain and more about whether the underlying technology can make rewards cheaper, more interoperable or more useful. For example, programmable rewards could theoretically allow merchants to issue incentives based on customer behaviour, time of day, basket size or repeat visits. They could also support partnerships between nearby merchants, or enable more transparent campaign tracking.

But none of that matters unless it works at the counter, during a lunch rush, with staff who may not be technically trained and customers who simply want to pay quickly.

Hojin Kim, CEO of ShardLab, said StoreHub’s merchant base changes the nature of what his company can build.

“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,” he said. “This partnership is about moving from pilots to scale and building products that create measurable value for both consumers and merchants.”

A crowded commerce stack

StoreHub operates in a competitive category that spans point‑of‑sale systems, payments, loyalty, inventory and restaurant operations. In Southeast Asia, it overlaps with players such as Singapore’s Qashier, which provides smart POS and payment solutions; Oddle, which focuses on restaurant ordering and management; and Indonesia’s iSeller, which serves omnichannel retail and F&B merchants. Globally, companies such as Shopify, Lightspeed and Square‑owner Block have shaped expectations around integrated commerce tools for small businesses.

The challenge for StoreHub is that merchants rarely buy software because it is elegant. They buy it because it solves immediate pain: fewer missed orders, faster payments, better cash flow, clearer stock records or more repeat customers. Any new rewards product born from the ShardLab tie‑up will be judged against those practical metrics.

The regional context also cuts both ways. Southeast Asia’s young, mobile‑first consumers are comfortable with digital payments and app‑based rewards. At the same time, the region remains highly localised. What works for a café in Kuala Lumpur may not work for a food stall in Bangkok or a boutique in Manila. Regulations, payment rails and consumer habits vary widely by market.

That makes StoreHub’s multi‑country presence useful, but also raises the bar for execution. A rewards system that depends on heavy consumer education or merchant training is unlikely to scale. A system that disappears into existing payment and checkout behaviour has a better chance.

For ShardLab and Hashed, the deal is also a test of whether blockchain‑adjacent infrastructure can find a more grounded role in everyday commerce. The sector has spent years looking for mainstream use cases beyond trading and speculation. Merchant rewards and payments are a plausible candidate, but only if the technology is invisible to users and clearly valuable to merchants.

StoreHub’s disclosure of its transaction scale suggests it is no longer positioning itself merely as a software provider for small businesses. It is becoming a commerce network with enough volume to test financial and consumer products on top of its operating system.

The investment may be undisclosed, and the first products are still to come. But the strategic direction is clear: StoreHub wants to sit closer to the transaction, the customer relationship and the merchant’s decision‑making layer. If the joint venture can turn loyalty from a cost centre into a measurable sales tool, it could offer a glimpse of where Southeast Asian commerce software is heading next.

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