Travel reward platform HeyMax eyes Japan, Hong Kong

The Asia-Pacific region is the fastest-growing travel market, with annual growth of 10%.

Fintech startup HeyMax, which lets travellers earn rewards seamlessly across several merchants, plans to enter Japan and Hong Kong later this year, and Korea and Taiwan by 2026 to tap into the growing travel economy.

“There's strong, organic demand globally for more travel, so we want to be able to meet our customers’ needs and to help them simplify and aggregate more travel rewards,” HeyMax CEO Joe Lu told Singapore Business Review.

The Asia-Pacific region accounts for a third of global travel volume and is also the fastest-growing market, with annual growth of 10%, he pointed out.

“The traveller economy is a force to be reckoned with,” he said via Zoom. “It's really embedded in all our day-to-day life.”

“If I'm just buying a coffee, swiping a card, the card earns me miles. I am actually participating in this aggregation of my future travel,” he added.

The Travel Forward 2025 report by research firm Phocuswright forecasts sustained growth in the global travel market through 2026, with yearly gains of as much as 9%.

“If you’re a traveller, whether you’re based in Singapore or anywhere in the world, when you go to another market, you will also be able to earn Max Miles from local merchants, beyond online or global merchants,” Lu said.

Lu expects HeyMax users to hit a million by 2026 from 120,000 now, and plans to double partner merchants to 1,000.

“We have quite a lot of really enthusiastic partners in the pipeline to bring more of these consolidated and interoperable rewards and top-notch reward experiences to users,” he said.

The CEO expects double-digit revenue in US dollars by 2026.

In May, the startup said its yearly revenue was expected to top $7.7m (US$6m). It also seeks to exceed $642.4m (US$500m) in facilitated transaction volume next year from $256.9m (US$200m) in May.

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