ShopBack raises $30m from Westpac as it gears up for IPO

ShopBack Group, a regional shopping and rewards platform, has raised US$30 million in equity from Australia-based Westpac Banking Corporation. This brings its total series F funding round to US$200 million as it steps up growth efforts across Asia Pacific and gears up for the public markets.

(From left) Westpac chief digital officer Jason Hair, senior manager Natalie Park, managing director of consumer finance Steve Rubenstein, and ShopBack Australia general manager Angus Muffet / Photo credit: ShopBack

The firm’s latest round follows the US$160 million it raised from Temasek-backed investment firm 65 Equity Partners and Singapore-based VC Asia Partners earlier this year. Other new and existing investors contributed the remaining US$10 million.

The deal is currently pending regulatory approval. With the close of its series F round, ShopBack has raised more than US$350 million in funding to date.

Henry Chan, co-founder and CEO of ShopBack Group, declined to disclose the firm’s valuation following the latest round. However, he says its funding round was “priced at a meaningful uplift” compared to the one in Q4 2021. At the time, the firm had a post-money valuation of US$540.3 million, according to VentureCap Insights.

The new capital will drive ShopBack’s growth efforts across its 10 Asia-Pacific markets and prepare the firm for “public markets readiness.” This will entail, among other things, “achieving meaningful commercial scale and building best-in-class governance, compliance, security, and reporting capabilities,” Chan says.

As part of the equity investment, the company has partnered with Westpac – Australia’s third largest lender – to allow the bank’s customers to access exclusive offers and deals on top of bonus cashbacks when they shop via ShopBack.

“With more customers choosing to shop online, we’ll also be exploring new ways to expand on this offering within Westpac’s digital channels,” Steve Rubenstein, Westpac’s managing director for consumer finance, said in a statement.

Australia has become an increasingly significant market for ShopBack since its entry in 2018. In its financial year ending March 31, 2021, the country made up a quarter of total revenue, according to the group’s financial filings.

In Singapore and Australia, where it serves over two million registered users in total, ShopBack also offers a payments product. Called ShopBack Pay, customers can pay and use their cashback balance at more than 5,000 physical stores.

See also: ShopBack doubles revenue in FY 2021, trims operating losses

ShopBack was founded in 2014 as a cashback platform for online transactions. Over the years, the company has expanded its range of products to include offline payments as well as buy now, pay later.

Its BNPL product, ShopBack Paylater, is available in Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand. Since its launch in July, the product has seen “strong traction,” given that it is “highly complementary” to ShopBack’s other services, Chan says. The firm plans to extend the product to other markets in the future.

The firm also recently boosted its management team with new hires. These include former Slack executive San Oo as chief technology officer, ex-Zalora chief revenue officer Alessio Romeni as commercial managing director, and former Agoda and eBay executive Alexander Yardley as global accounts managing director.