ShopBack

What if the agent that wrote your code could also catch its own mistakes, before a single human had to review it? At ShopBack, that is not hypothetical. The lesson we kept relearning: better prompts only get you so far. What actually moves the needle is the infrastructure around the model - the orchestration, validation, and recovery logic that decides whether AI ships reliably at scale. Same model. Same prompts. The difference was entirely structural. Code review first-pass rate: up from 40% to over 70%. Incident investigation for known patterns: down from 15 minutes to under 5. AI fluency at the individual level is one thing. Building the infrastructure that makes AI reliable across an entire org is what it means to operate as an AI-native engineering team. That is the standard we are building toward. Yongkang Yan, a Senior Software Engineer at ShopBack, wrote about what that took, and what it exposed along the way. Read the full piece on the ShopBack Tech Blog: https://lnkd.in/gN2KFN7X

The hardest thing to shop for is the thing you cannot describe. An outfit on a friend. A chair in a café. A bag on a feed. The want is instant but the right search terms are not. Shop by Image, ShopBack's new AI visual search, closes that gap. A shopper uploads a photo or screenshot, and ShopBack surfaces visually similar products from across its merchant network, side by side, each with its price and Cashback rate shown before they buy. So they can see which store has it, which one has it for less, and where they earn the most Cashback. Available now across more than 50 merchants in Singapore and over 100 in Australia. See it. Find it for less. Earn Cashback. Read all about it here : https://lnkd.in/gbj2274Z

It's official. ShopBack is now the Official Shopping Rewards Sponsor of Texas Athletics. Developed with Longhorn Sports Properties, a division of LEARFIELD, the multi-year partnership gives Longhorns fans new ways to earn rewards and unlock exclusive offers from leading retailers in North America, turning fandom into value that lasts all year, not only on gamedays. The scale speaks for itself. The Texas Longhorns command one of the largest and most engaged fan communities in college sports: more than 10.3 million fans nationwide and 600,000 living alumni across more than 150 chapters, digitally active with strong e-commerce habits. This is built to live year-round and across the community, not just in the stadium. It spans football, basketball, baseball and softball, and it shows up where Longhorns already are: a newly named ShopBack Gate at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium, name, image and likeness (NIL) collaborations with Longhorns student-athletes, and the Take It to the House sweepstakes that rewards fans in the moments that matter most on the field. "Younger consumers already shop mobile-first, and rewards should be just as dynamic, useful and connected to how they discover, buy and engage with brands. This relationship brings our vision to life by giving students, alumni and fans real value back through everyday purchases, while helping leading retailers show up in moments that already matter," said Carolina P., General Manager, North America at ShopBack. As Lucas Motta, VP of Longhorn Sports Properties, put it: "ShopBack's commitment to Texas Athletics while creating meaningful benefits for the people most passionate about the Longhorns is exactly what we look for in a partner." This is our first collegiate partnership in the US. It will not be our last. Hook 'em.

ShopBack USA is entering the second half of the year with clear momentum — and last week in Austin was a strong signal of what’s ahead. With many of our partners and industry leaders in town for impact.com’s iPX Conference, we brought the community together through two curated moments: an executive lunch for focused partner conversations, followed by an evening reception and screening tied to a nationally recognised documentary series. As our business in North America grows, moments like these matter. They create space for deeper conversations, stronger partnerships, and shared conviction around the future of rewards and commerce. Supported by Tillo, Thanks, and PrimeDigitalAds, the events brought together the right relationships and momentum behind what comes next. Big things are coming for ShopBack USA — Texas-sized, naturally.

A small team did not ship across seven markets because AI made the work easy. They shipped because the hard decisions were made early. ShopBack eSIM lets travellers buy a data plan, install it once, and stay connected across 160+ countries — directly in the ShopBack app, with Cashback on every purchase. To build it across iOS and Android, William Karminten and his team treated the specification as the contract: every edge case, error state, and platform decision mapped before execution began. That mattered because AI is only as useful as the clarity behind it. With the system already defined, AI could accelerate implementation instead of creating ambiguity. It also gave William, an iOS engineer of four years, enough structure to contribute across the full stack for the first time. This is the operating model we care about: small teams, strong foundations, sharper leverage. A new vertical. Two platforms. Seven markets. Built with discipline before speed. Full article on the ShopBack Tech Blog: https://lnkd.in/gN4F9FYU

The most rewarding travel experiences are built around fewer steps. #ICYMI: ShopBack users across Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Australia, and Germany can now purchase travel eSIMs directly in the ShopBack app. The flow is simple: choose a destination, select a data plan, install the eSIM, and stay connected across 160+ countries, with Cashback earned on data plan purchases. No local SIM hunt. No roaming uncertainty. No unnecessary steps between landing and getting online. This is a practical extension of how ShopBack already supports travellers: from planning and booking with rewards, to the essential moments that shape the trip itself. Watch how it works.

The question we ask our engineers at ShopBack isn't "Do you use AI?" It's "Have you changed how you work because of it?" The engineers who get that right are not the ones who use AI the most. They are the ones who never stop questioning it : who know when to trust the output, and when to push back. Haixiang Yan, a senior frontend engineer on our Content Platform team, recently demonstrated what that looks like. He shipped a full-stack feature for our Merchant Page — backend, design, testing, deployment — in a single project cycle, running AI as a structured teammate while retaining full ownership of every decision that mattered. "Confidence came from my own understanding of the system, not from blind trust in AI." As ShopBack scales across payments and rewards, this is the engineering culture we are building. And Haixiang Yan's story is one example of what it looks like in practice. Full article on the ShopBack Tech Blog : https://lnkd.in/geTMzvdq

Mobility is one of the highest-frequency transaction categories, yet rewards in the category remain limited and fragmented. ShopBack is partnering with TADA to change that. TADA will become our first ride-hailing partner to offer ShopBack Pay at checkout, letting riders pay, offset fares with accumulated Cashback, and earn Cashback on everyday trips. Extending rewards into transport is a natural next step in building a more rewarding everyday experience. Consumers can look forward to more details closer to the Q3 launch.

Rewards are no longer a niche behaviour. Across every income bracket and demographic, consumers are actively seeking value before they commit to a purchase. They want to know what a brand offers them upfront, not after the transaction. Brands are responding by starting earlier. Last year, holiday shopping spikes in the US began at Prime Day in early October and held. Consumers seeking discounts and rewards were already in market, and companies moved to meet them there. Carolina P., ShopBack's General Manager for North America, recently joined The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® podcast to unpack what this means for channel strategy. One shift she highlighted: the metrics brands optimise for are expanding beyond new customer acquisition, toward lifetime value and existing customer quality. Zara entering the US Cashback ecosystem for the first time this past holiday season reflects that shift. ShopBack sits at that intersection, connecting high-intent users with merchant and brand partners at every stage of the funnel. The way consumers interact with brands will keep evolving. What will not change is the seeking of value.

Public readiness is built long before a listing window opens. For ShopBack, the question is not simply when to list, but whether the company has earned the discipline, predictability, and governance that public markets demand. In a recent feature by The Edge Singapore, ShopBack's Acting CFO Huanmin Huang put it plainly: "If you build the company to be public-ready, it becomes a better company regardless of whether you actually list in the near term. That discipline is valuable in itself." That is where our focus remains: operational execution, long-term value creation, and building a business that can withstand scrutiny. ShopBack closed FY2026 with 45% year-on-year revenue growth, full-year adjusted EBITDA profitability, and six consecutive quarters of adjusted EBITDA profitability. What comes next is depth: stronger engagement, smarter use of AI, better unit economics, and a more rewarding ecosystem for users and merchants. Public or private, the standard remains the same: keep building with discipline.