ShopBack seeks edge in financial services, adds over 300 staff in last 6 months

SINGAPORE-BASED ShopBack, which made its way up in the startup world with its cashback app, is looking to expand deeper into financial services and hire more staff in payments, compliance and engineering-related roles this year.

The company said it hired over 300 employees to its team in the past 6 months, excluding staff added through the acquisition of buy now, pay later (BNPL) startup hoolah.

ShopBack’s website lists 231 contract and full-time job openings across various roles, bucking the trend of massive layoffs that have afflicted the region’s tech scene as startups slash costs amid a downturn.

Investors such as Temasek have cumulatively pumped over US$230 million in the company, including through a recent US$80 million Series F funding round led by growth investor Asia Partners.

ShopBack’s new headquarters in Singapore, launched on Friday (Jul 1), has over 220 employees  and can house up to around 250 staff. Founded in 2014, the company now has 900 employees globally and claims US$3.5 billion in annual sales for 10,000 online and in-store merchants across 10 markets.

Seen as one of the South-east Asian contenders for the public market, ShopBack has been beefing up its business by going into payments and BNPL services.

Last December, ShopBack acquired hoolah as part of its foray into financial services. ShopBack recently launched a feature called ShopBack Pay to allow over 2 million users in Singapore and Australia to pay at more than 3,000 merchant outlets.

But the company faces stiff competition from other similarly well-funded peers who have a longer track record in payments and are operating BNPL services too. Shopee has been aggressively pushing the use of its payments feature, while more established payments players Grab and GoTo are expanding in BNPL even as the sector takes a beating from rising interest rates and weakening consumer sentiment.

“With the launch of our headquarters here, we seek to further fulfil our mission to enhance the offerings provided by partnering merchants to bring our services to more shoppers in the region,” said Henry Chan, chief executive officer and co-founder of Shopback, in a statement on Friday.

The office occupies a refurbished school building in Pasir Panjang managed by the Singapore Land Authority. It covers a site area of about 88,000 square feet (sq ft), with the office space taking 3 floors and spanning about 28,000 sq ft.