Joel Leong

Joel Leong co-founded ShopBack in 2014 on the idea that online shopping should be more rewarding for consumers and more measurable for brands. The cashback and rewards platform now serves more than 60 million shoppers across 13 markets and drives more than US$5.5 billion in annual sales for over 20,000 merchant partners.

In 2024, the company went through a deliberate reset, reducing its workforce by nearly a quarter and shuttering its buy-now-pay-later service, after a period of rapid expansion. The pivot towards sustainable growth has paid off: in the 12 months to March 2026, ShopBack posted more than 30 per cent revenue growth and six consecutive quarters of adjusted Ebitda profitability—a key metric showing it is making a profit from its core, day-to-day operation. The company has also expanded into the US as its 13th market and has crossed S$1 billion in total cashback paid to users globally.

For Leong, the lessons of that reset have shaped how he now thinks about growth itself. “Focus on what drives impact,” he says — and not to confuse it with hype, activity, or words. As ShopBack pushes deeper into markets like the US and Germany, he's clear that the company is no longer chasing pins on a map: “It used to be that we measured ourselves by the map, how many markets we were in. Now the ambition is much more about going deeper in the markets we’re in than adding pins to it.”