Hashed's ShardLab targets Southeast Asia's payments market via StoreHub deal
What's the deal? ShardLabDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, the fintech venture studio of Korean firm HashedDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, has made a strategic investment in Southeast Asian commerce and payments platform StoreHub and will set up a joint venture to build blockchain-based payment and reward systems. The plan spans StoreHub's network of more than 20,000 merchants.
The venture will apply stablecoin payments and personalised rewards to real commerce settings, testing consumer and merchant uptake across the region.
Why now? Southeast Asia has limited traditional financial coverage but a young population and high mobile usage, driving rapid growth in digital payments. StoreHub operates across four countries, including Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand, processing over 200 million transactions and about $3.5 billion in annual volume.
What's the endgame? The joint venture marks ShardLab's first move from pilot projects into large-scale live commerce. The studio has already tested NFT voucher payments at major Thai malls and stablecoin payments in Abu Dhabi.
The companies plan to expand around proven business models and disclose specific plans as services launch.
What they're saying: "Every service we roll out will strictly meet the core standard of whether it genuinely helps merchants grow their sales," said StoreHub chief executive officer Wai Hong Fong (translated from Korean).
ShardLab chief executive officer Kim Ho-jin said pilots showed how next-generation payment and reward technology improves the consumer experience, adding the partnership will scale that "to a network of over 20,000 real merchants" (translated from Korean).
The signal: Crypto firms are increasingly moving stablecoin technology out of testing and into everyday retail, where merchant volume and mobile-first users offer the clearest path to adoption. ShardLab is betting Southeast Asia's underbanked, fast-growing payments market is the place to prove it works at scale.
Image credit: PattayaPatrol
