Independent Strategic Analysis · Singapore · Loyalty & Travel
The company that prints its own money
HeyMax built a private currency people actually want — in under three years, on US$13.6 million, in a market of six million people. It is now at the moment every loyalty programme reaches, usually far less publicly: discovering what that currency really costs.
02
At a glance
Everything below is HeyMax's own disclosure unless marked otherwise. The brass figures are the ones that decide the company's future.
Capital raised$13.6MSeed US$2.6M · Series A US$11M
Est. post-money$50–61MSeries A, Jan 2026 · estimate
Revenue run-rate$6MStated May 2025, +5× YoY
FY2026 est.$12–16MModel estimate
Registered users150kJanuary 2026
Monthly actives44.5kQ1 2025 — not disclosed since
Merchants800+Target 1,000 by end-2026
Transfer partners~20Down from 37 · target 50+ by 2027
Miles issued / yr500MTarget 2 billion by end-2026
Redemption rate9.9%27M of 272M · mature = 60–80%
Est. miles liability$6.2M56% of all capital raised · estimate
Headcount~30From 10 a year earlier · 11 open roles
The number nobody publishes
As at May 2025, HeyMax members had earned 272 million Max Miles and redeemed 27 million — a cumulative redemption rate of 9.9%. Mature loyalty programmes redeem 60–80%. On my model roughly 700 million miles are outstanding today, representing a future fulfilment cost of about US$6.2 million. That is 56% of every dollar HeyMax has ever raised, and it appears in no press release, funding announcement or metrics post. Estimate
03
Ten findings that matter
01
The wedge is real, and it is not "cashback with extra steps"
Merchants pay in cash; HeyMax pays consumers in miles. A mile is valued by the customer at 1.8–3.0 cents and costs HeyMax around 1.16 cents to issue — and nothing at all on the quarter never redeemed. Cashback platforms have no such spread: a dollar of cashback costs exactly a dollar.
02
The economics are far tighter than the headline, and the tightness is deferred
At 500M miles a year and ~1.16¢ fully-loaded cost, HeyMax accrues roughly US$4.4M of reward cost against ~US$6M of revenue — an accrual gross margin near 27%, not the 90% a cash view of a young programme suggests.
03
There is a liability-shaped hole in the public narrative
~700 million miles outstanding, ~US$6.2M of expected future cost. It is the first thing a Series B diligence team will model, and HeyMax should get there first.
04
The 2026 retrenchments are the model self-correcting in public
Cash For Miles killed and 17 transfer partners removed (June); Accor devalued 1:1 → 3:2, a 33% cut, on eight days' notice (July); the Chocolate Finance earn rate halved (2025). Three exercises of discretion in twelve months.
05
The marketing promise and the legal terms diverge
Marketing says "Max Miles never expire." Terms clause 4 permits removing a user and their entire balance after 12 months of inactivity; clause 7 reserves the right to introduce expiry; clause 6 states miles are not held on trust. Standard drafting — and a reputational fuse.
06
A third business is running quietly: card lead generation
Every merchant page renders a "best card" module across 17 issuers. A funded Singapore card referral is worth S$100–350. This is a high-margin, low-visibility line that competes directly with SingSaver — which is simultaneously a HeyMax B2B customer.
07
HeyMax First is the most interesting and most dangerous thing they've built
Functionally an uncollateralised, non-recourse, open-ended advance of a currency the lender prints, at 2.3–3.0¢ against a 1.8¢ floor, with no repayment deadline. The float and fee income are excellent. The adverse-selection and BNPL-characterisation risks are real.
08
Strong locally, structurally exposed globally
ShopBack (60M users, US$1.4B, now EBITDA-positive) could add a miles currency whenever it chooses. Ascenda supplies HeyMax's transfer rails and sells the same B2B product to banks. Agoda × Mastercard puts travel redemption inside a card network's platform.
09
Capital efficiency is the strongest argument for the next round
US$6M of revenue on US$13.6M raised with 30 people — a 0.44× revenue-to-capital ratio and ~US$200k revenue per employee, built in a single city-state. The cap table (Peak XV, Agoda's co-founder, Visa APAC's former President) is a distribution asset, not a funding one.
10
The verdict
HeyMax can raise a Series B, can lead the APAC open-loop loyalty category, and can reach profitability — but not all three on the current configuration. The company that gets to profit is a B2B loyalty-infrastructure business with a consumer app as its demand proof, not a consumer rewards app with a side business.
04
Company and timeline
HeyMax trades as MAX NOW PTE. LTD., a Singapore private limited company founded in 2023. Its global headquarters formally opened in May 2026, with the ribbon cut by Alvin Tan — Minister of State for Trade & Industry and National Development, and a board member of the Monetary Authority of Singapore. That is an unusually strong ecosystem signal for a company of thirty people.
Hong Kong went live on 5 November 2025, entered by acquiring krip, the city's first integrated credit-card-benefits platform, four months earlier. Japan, Taiwan and Australia have been announced for end-2026.
Three arcs, read from the timeline
2023 – mid-2025: build the currency. Merchants, transfer partners, earn surfaces. FlyAnywhere in June 2025 is the capstone — it gives the currency a floor, which is the single most important thing a private currency can have.
Mid-2025 – early 2026: buy and enter markets. krip, Hong Kong, Cathay, Octopus, Series A. Note the sequencing: buy the team and the users, anchor with the flag carrier, plug into the dominant payment rail.
2026: discover the true cost of a mile. Cash For Miles killed, 17 partners cut, Accor devalued, and a product launched that sells miles forward at 2.3–3.0¢. Every one of those points the same direction.
- Late 2022Meta Singapore layoffsFour engineers become available simultaneously — described by the CEO as a "black swan event" that made a calibre of talent available a pre-seed startup could never otherwise assemble.
- 2023MAX NOW PTE LTD foundedheymax.ai launches in Singapore.
- 14 May 2024Card Maximiser launches with VisaMCC-based card recommendation across 17 issuers. First tier-1 network partnership.
- 2 Jul 2024Seed — US$2.6M led by January CapitalWith Tenity, Ascend Angels, XA Network. 50k users, 50M miles earned, 10k flights redeemed.
- 11 Feb 2025Chocolate Finance Visa debit partnership2 Max Miles per S$1 on virtually everything — Singapore's first miles-earning Visa debit card. Unusually inclusive of normally-excluded categories: utilities, insurance, hospitals, education, government bills. Halved on 1 July 2025.
- 27 May 2025Metrics releaseUS$6M ARR, +5× YoY · 120k users · 44.5k MAU · US$200M+ cumulative volume (15× YoY) · 272M miles earned, 27M redeemed.
- Jun 2025FlyAnywhere launchesAny flight, any airline, any cabin — reimbursed by PayNow at S$0.018/mile in 60–90 minutes. A genuine category first, and the currency's floor.
- 23 Jul 2025Acquires krip (Hong Kong)Brand retired, team absorbed, users migrated with free Max Miles. Terms undisclosed; likely a small acqui-hire funded from seed capital.
- 5 Nov 2025Hong Kong launch with Cathay300+ HK merchants. InvestHK endorsement. Targets 1M regional users and 2 billion Max Miles by end-2026.
- Dec 2025Octopus partnershipMax Miles on Mobile Octopus payments — a first for Hong Kong's dominant payment rail. Alvin Tse joins as Miles & Points Ambassador.
- 28 Jan 2026Series A — US$11M led by Peak XV PartnersWith Betatron, January Capital, Tenity. Angels: Rob Rosenstein (Agoda co-founder) and David Lee (former President, Visa Asia Pacific). 150k users, 800+ merchants.
- Jan 2026Agoda × Mastercard announcedEmbedded travel redemption for APAC banks — the most direct competitive threat to HeyMax's B2B thesis.
- Mar 2026Flying Blue direct transfers addedPlus a UOB Preferred Visa stacking promotion reaching 6 mpd.
- 15 Apr 2026HeyMax First waitlist opensThe move into a credit-shaped product.
- May 2026Singapore global HQ opened by Minister Alvin TanHeadcount 30, up from 10. Plan to double Singapore headcount by 2027.
- 1 Jun 2026Cash For Miles killed; 17 transfer partners removedAeroplan, Alaska, American, Avianca, BA, Emirates, Etihad, Frontier, Hainan, Qantas, THAI, Turkish, United, Virgin Australia, Hilton, Marriott, Hyatt. Stated reason: unsustainable — partners charging up to US$0.035/mile.
- 8 Jun 2026yuu Rewards Club two-way conversionyuu → Max Miles at 3.6:1; Max Miles → yuu at 1:3. A 16.7% round-trip spread captured by HeyMax.
- 1 Jul 2026Accor Live Limitless devalued 1:1 → 3:2A 33% cut, announced with eight days' notice. Value per mile falls from ~2.95¢ to ~1.97¢.
- 6 Jul 2026HeyMax First launches globally"World's first miles-upfront membership." Up to 1,000,000 miles drawn before they are earned.
- 14 Jul 2026Award Companion launchesScans months of KrisFlyer award availability in one click. Narrow, deep, aimed at the highest-intent segment.
05
People and organisation
Four ex-Meta engineers: Joe Xizhi Lu (CEO), Wang Ke, Jialu Zhong and Sean Dy. Lu holds a BSc from the University of Michigan and worked at Expedia before Meta — directly relevant, because HeyMax is a travel-distribution business wearing a loyalty coat. He has personally cycled through more than a hundred credit cards, and says he spent roughly three years developing the framework before the layoff supplied the time and the co-founders.
Two of his framings are strategy, not soundbite:
"Why does the consumer have to start with a loss? That is the fundamental question."
And: "Consumers will increasingly be universally smart and savvy, because it will cost almost nothing to be smart and savvy." That is an AI-deflation-of-expertise thesis — if optimisation is free, the arbitrage moves from knowing to aggregating, which is exactly where HeyMax sits.
The second wave of hires came from Endowus, Aspire, Funding Societies and SingSaver — a fintech distribution bench, not a loyalty-operations bench. It explains why the B2B pitch is fluent, and why the actuarial discipline of running a loyalty programme appears to have been learned on the job and in public.
The eleven open roles, and what they reveal
| Role | Location | Function |
|---|---|---|
| Tech Lead | Singapore | Engineering |
| Senior Software Engineer | Singapore | Engineering |
| Software Engineer – Product | Singapore | Engineering |
| Senior Product Designer | Singapore | Product |
| CX & AI Specialist | Singapore | Customer Support |
| Senior Marketing Manager | Hong Kong | Marketing |
| Marketing Communications Manager | Manila | Marketing |
| Marketing Communications Manager | Kuala Lumpur | Marketing |
| Affiliate Manager | Singapore | Marketing |
| Affiliate Manager | Kuala Lumpur | Marketing |
| Customer Support Agent | Manila | Customer Support |
The conspicuous absence
No risk role. No actuary. No compliance hire. No finance lead. No business development role for the B2B business. For a company that has just launched a credit-shaped product and carries a nine-figure liability denominated in a currency it prints itself, the absence of a risk or actuarial function is the most striking gap in the entire organisational picture.
Kuala Lumpur and Manila are cost-arbitrage hubs, not markets — affiliate and marketing-comms roles with no country manager, running at roughly 35–50% of Singapore cost. That is a deliberate and sensible margin lever. But the Japan, Taiwan and Australia expansion promised "by end of 2026" has no hiring behind it as of July.
06
The product surface
HeyMax's surface area is larger than any single review captures — and the surface area is the strategy. Each earn mechanism is a different merchant-relationship type; each redemption mechanism is a different cost structure.
Thirteen ways to earn
Commerce surfaces
- Affiliate shopping — 800+ merchants, rates set per merchant and per category. Up to 14.25 miles per dollar in peak categories.
- Vouchers & gift cards — bought inside the app; miles credit instantly, solving the 90-day wait.
- In-app travel booking — flights and hotels.
- Dining & reservations.
Payment & card surfaces
- Card Maximiser (Visa, May 2024) — MCC-based best-card recommendation across 17 issuers. Visa only
- Issuer partnerships — Chocolate Finance Visa debit at 2 mpd on virtually everything.
- Stacked issuer campaigns — e.g. UOB Preferred Visa to 6 mpd.
- Transit — bus and MRT in Singapore, up to 6 mpd on campaign.
- Octopus — Mobile Octopus payments in Hong Kong.
Network surfaces
- Coalition inbound — yuu Points → Max Miles at 3.6:1, up to 10 mpd.
- Referrals — two-sided, 700–1,000 miles per side.
- Campaigns — 30 help-centre articles' worth of merchant-funded bursts.
- Employee benefits — corporate Max Miles via employers.
- Financial products — Airwallex, Atome, StashAway, FWD.
The Klook page, decoded
A single merchant page shows how granular the rate architecture is — and reveals the card-referral business hiding in plain sight.
| Category | Max Miles per S$1 |
|---|---|
| Travel Insurance | 8.0 |
| China purchases (day-specific promo) | 6.0 |
| Tours · Hotels · Dining · Car rental · Attractions · Transport · Staycation | 1.6 |
| Special activities · Klook gift cards | 0.8 |
| Excluded activities | 0 |
Same page also renders a "best card to use" module across American Express, Aspire, Bank of China, CIMB, Chocolate Finance, Citibank, DBS/POSB, DCS, HSBC, ICBC, Maybank, OCBC, Standard Chartered, Trust, UOB, Validus and YouTrip.
The ninety-day clock
Every merchant page carries a timeline: Purchase today → Tracked in 1 day → Redeemable in 90 days. It is the most economically significant detail on the page and almost nobody writes about it. It creates a rolling 90-day float on every mile issued, defers liability crystallisation, and gives HeyMax a three-month window to reverse miles on returns and chargebacks. It is also the single most common source of user frustration.
The honest tension
Both app stores rate HeyMax 3.7 out of 5, against a self-reported CSAT of 4.5 and a 10,000-member Telegram community. That gap is diagnostic: the passionate cohort is small and the median user is finding friction. The mechanics that make the economics work — click-through attribution, cookie windows, the 90-day hold, category-level rate tables — are precisely the mechanics that produce a mediocre median experience. That is not a bug to fix with polish. It is a strategic fork.
07
Max Miles: anatomy of a private currency
What a mile is worth, by redemption route
FlyAnywhere at 1.8¢ is a floor — unconditional, universally available, denominated in cash. Transfers are a ceiling. Gift cards are a drain. Which means a rational, informed user never redeems below 1.8¢ — so HeyMax's marginal cost is effectively floored at 1.8¢ for every engaged user, and its blended cost is only lower because unsophisticated users take gift cards and a quarter of miles are never redeemed at all.
The 2026 devaluations, read as economics
| Change | Effective | Magnitude | Reason |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chocolate Finance earn halved; bill-pay capped | 1 Jul 2025 | −50% earn | Partner-side economics |
| Cash For Miles killed; 17 partners removed | 1 Jun 2026 | Optionality loss | Stated: unsustainable — partners charging up to US$0.035/mile; prepaid-card overhead; phone/in-person fulfilment |
| Accor Live Limitless 1:1 → 3:2 | 1 Jul 2026 | −33% | Inferred: a surge in redemptions at unsustainable volumes; metering the flow |
Read alongside the launch of HeyMax First at 2.3–3.0¢ per mile, these tell one coherent story: HeyMax's internal cost of a redeemed mile sits meaningfully above the 1.8¢ the market anchored on, and the company is closing the gap from both ends.
The terms of use — the most revealing document HeyMax publishes
| Clause | Provision | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| 6 — Nature of Max Miles | "you do not gain any proprietary right… does not constitute monies held on trust… rights limited to personal or contractual rights of repayment" | The regulatory keystone — keeps HeyMax outside the Payment Services Act. Also makes members unsecured creditors in an insolvency. |
| 4 — Account inactivity | Right to remove a user "including the full balance" after 12 consecutive months of inactivity | Directly contradicts the "never expire" marketing. The single largest driver of breakage. |
| 7 — Programme changes | Right to vary, terminate, modify eligibility and calculation, and "add or change the duration taken for Max Miles to expire" | Total unilateral discretion, explicitly including introducing expiry. |
| 2 — Earning | May increase or decrease rates; "you shall not be entitled to request any explanation pertaining to the calculation methods" | No obligation to explain rate changes. |
Cheapest high-return fix available
These terms are entirely normal — every major loyalty programme has equivalents. But HeyMax's differentiation is built on being the un-loyalty-programme, and its stated company value is Transparency: users can rely on it "to deliver exactly what we promise." Either qualify the "never expire" claim, or amend clause 4 to exclude balance forfeiture. It costs an afternoon and removes the company's largest untreated reputational risk.
08
HeyMax First
Launched 6 July 2026 as "the world's first miles-upfront membership." Strip the marketing and it is an uncollateralised, non-recourse, open-ended advance of a currency the lender itself prints, priced at 2.3–3.0¢ against a 1.8¢ floor, with no maturity date and no credit assessment.
| Tier | Miles pool | Annual fee | Access fee / mile | Max drawdown cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Silver | 30,000 | Free for life | 3.0¢ | S$900 |
| Gold | 100,000 | S$299 | 2.7¢ | S$2,700 |
| Platinum | 300,000 | S$699 | 2.5¢ | S$7,500 |
| Reserve | 1,000,000 | S$1,999 | 2.3¢ | S$23,000 |
Draw in 10,000-mile blocks, paid by PayNow, credited instantly. Repay in 10,000-mile blocks from earnings. No repayment deadline; reclaim eligibility persists indefinitely. Access fees fully reclaimable. First-year annual fee waived for all new joiners.
The insight that makes it work
HeyMax does not primarily make money on the access fee. It makes money because a member who has drawn 100,000 miles must route S$50,000–70,000 of spending through HeyMax to reclaim it. The access fee is not a price — it is a commitment device that converts a casual user into a maximally-engaged one, in exchange for a refund. HeyMax is selling GMV commitment and calling it a membership. Even the worst-case member leaves HeyMax cash-positive, which is unusual for a credit product. Model
Four real risks
Adverse selection
The members most attracted to a S$1,999 Reserve tier are sophisticated optimisers — exactly the cohort that extracts maximum value per mile and is least likely to route grocery spending through an affiliate portal to earn it back. Priced for the average, bought by the extreme.
Post-consumption motivation
Will members work as hard repaying a debt as pursuing an unearned reward? All of behavioural economics says no. Once the trip is taken, the motivational engine that was going to fund repayment has already fired.
Self-referential devaluation
HeyMax devalues Max Miles while members hold negative balances denominated in Max Miles. A member who drew at 2.7¢ in June to transfer to Accor watched that value fall 33% on 1 July. Their reclaim obligation did not fall. Unhedged, one-sided, sitting on the member.
Regulatory characterisation
Pay a fee, receive value now, repay later. Close enough to BNPL that a regulator inclined to look would find something. It survives on no interest, no credit assessment, no enforceable obligation — and Singapore's BNPL regime being a voluntary Code of Conduct rather than licensing.
A tell: on 5 June 2026, a month before global launch, HeyMax added a free Silver tier and extended reclaim eligibility indefinitely. Both are conversion-rescue moves, suggesting paid-tier conversion in the waitlist cohort came in below plan. The free tier is strategically right regardless — it turns the product from a wall into a funnel. Inference
09
The B2B platform: "Stripe for miles"
HeyMax's Product Hunt tagline is the cleanest articulation the company has produced: "Stripe for miles — one API, 30+ airlines and hotels." Building a loyalty programme with real redemption value is expensive and slow. HeyMax has done that work once and resells it, across four segments: brands (loyalty-as-a-service), consumer businesses (affiliate acquisition, "reduce your CAC by 50%"), airlines and hotels (redemption partnership), and employers (benefits).
The most important economic distinction in this analysis
Consumer side: a merchant sets a ~5% affiliate commission; HeyMax gives back ~2–3% in miles and keeps the difference. HeyMax is a price-taker.
B2B side: a bank buys 10 million Max Miles. HeyMax names the price — call it 1.4¢ — against a fully-loaded cost of ~1.16¢. The customer's alternative is building an airline partner network itself. HeyMax is a price-setter.
The Ascenda problem
HeyMax's points-transfer rails run substantially on Ascenda, a Singapore company founded in 2013 that sells the same B2B loyalty infrastructure directly to banks. Ascenda is simultaneously HeyMax's supplier, its cost of goods sold, a party with full visibility into its transfer volumes, and its direct competitor for exactly the bank customers HeyMax needs. Ascenda's own net sales fell 5.8% in 2024, which makes it more likely, not less, to defend its accounts aggressively.
The strategic imperative is unambiguous: contract airlines and hotels directly, and reduce Ascenda to a fallback for the long tail. The 2026 additions — Flying Blue, JAL, Asia Miles, EVA, Philippine Airlines, Radisson — read as exactly this migration in progress.
The yuu structure — evidence they understand currency markets
Inbound: yuu Points → Max Miles at 3.6 : 1. Outbound: Max Miles → yuu Points at 1 : 3. A round trip destroys 0.6 yuu — a 16.7% spread captured by HeyMax. More importantly, the asymmetry means HeyMax acquires yuu Points below the price at which it sells them. That is a market-making position, and it is the first genuine evidence that HeyMax understands itself as a currency exchange rather than a rewards app.
What the B2B business is missing
No published platform
No developer documentation, no API reference, no sandbox, no pricing, no SLA, no security or certification posture. "One API" is a positioning claim with no public surface. Real infrastructure companies publish docs — it is how they get bought.
No lighthouse logo
No named Tier-1 bank issuing Max Miles as a primary card currency. SingSaver is a comparison site; Chocolate Finance is a fintech. Neither is the marquee reference a Series B needs.
10
Revenue streams, dissected
HeyMax has never published a revenue breakdown. The inventory below is fact; the mix is my model. Estimate
Where the ~US$14M comes from
58% of revenue comes from the lowest-defensibility, most price-taking, most cyclically exposed stream in the business. The two streams where HeyMax has genuine pricing power — B2B issuance and card referrals — are 27% combined. Getting that above 50% is the single most important strategic objective this company has.
| Stream | Share | Gross margin | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Affiliate commissions | 58% | ~60% | Blended gross rate ~4.6% of routed GMV, net of network overrides |
| B2B Max Miles issuance | 19% | ~17% direct | Price-setting; cash upfront against deferred cost; creates the balances that drive later GMV |
| Card referral / lead-gen | 8% | ~95% | S$100–350 per funded application across 17 issuers. Materially under-narrated by the company |
| Redemption-side spread | 5% | Mixed | Gift-card wholesale discount, in-app booking margin, the 16.7% yuu round-trip spread |
| HeyMax First | 4% | ~50% | Launched July 2026 — a stub year. FY2027 is where it matters |
| Campaign / media fees | 4% | ~80% | Featured placement, category sponsorship, bonus-mile campaigns |
| Employee benefits | 1.5% | ~20% | Contracted, recurring, sold to a different budget line |
| Other | 0.5% | — | Data monetisation is latent and unexploited |
11
Unit economics, reconstructed
What a redeemed Max Mile actually costs, by channel
Channel-weighted blended cost of a redeemed mile: ~1.55¢. At a 75% ultimate redemption rate (25% breakage), the cost of an issued mile is ~1.16¢. That single number drives every financial conclusion in this analysis. Estimate
Cost / redeemed mile1.55¢Channel-weighted, incl. transfer bonuses
Cost / issued mile1.16¢At 75% ultimate redemption
Realised take rate4.6%Independently validated against disclosure
Contribution margin57%Per affiliate transaction
Revenue / registered user$40Per year
Revenue / active user$135Per year
Blended CACS$12–25Referral- and partner-led
Payback1.5–3 moOn an active user
The model validates against disclosure
HeyMax reported US$200M+ cumulative transaction volume at May 2025 and ~US$6M annualised revenue. If FY2025 routed GMV was ~US$130M (cumulative US$200M with 15× YoY growth implies most volume occurred in the trailing year), then US$6M ÷ US$130M = a 4.6% realised take rate — exactly my modelled gross commission rate, derived independently. That is a reassuring cross-check on the whole reconstruction.
The share-of-wallet gap
HeyMax's own marketing says an average Singapore household spending ~S$2,100 a month earns 25,000–50,000 Max Miles a year. Actual issuance is ~3,300 per registered user per year. That is not dishonesty — it is the gap between addressable and routed spend. But it precisely quantifies the core product problem:
HeyMax captures roughly 7–12% of the spending it could already capture from users it already has.
Closing that gap requires no new user, no new market and no new merchant. It is the largest, cheapest and least risky growth available to this company — and on my sensitivity analysis it is worth nearly US$10M of EBITDA by 2028, more than double the next-largest lever.
The CAC insight
Blended CAC of S$12–25 is an order of magnitude below the S$40–150 typical for Singapore consumer fintech. The reason is structural: the acquisition incentive is paid in a currency HeyMax prints at 1.16¢ and the user values at 1.8–3.0¢. HeyMax pays for growth in its own money. That is the same trick airlines have used for forty years, and it is the most underappreciated asset in the business.
12
P&L, the two-books problem, and the liability
The same year, on two accounting bases
Cash basis recognises reward cost when a mile is redeemed. Accrual basis recognises it when a mile is issued. Both are defensible under different assumptions — but IFRS 15 comes down firmly on the accrual side: a loyalty point is a material right, and consideration must be deferred until redemption or expiry. It is why every airline reports a "Loyalty Program Liability" line.
The most valuable insight in this analysis
When HeyMax is audited to IFRS for a Series B, the accrual view is the one that will appear. A founder narrative built on the cash view will meet a diligence process built on the accrual view, and the FY2026 difference is US$3.8M — 27% of revenue.
Get ahead of it. A company that presents its own liability model with a defensible breakage assumption looks like a programme operator. A company that has one produced for it by an investor's accountants looks like a startup that didn't know what business it was in.
Estimated balance sheet, mid-2026 Est
| Cash and equivalents | 9.5 |
| Affiliate receivables | 1.8 |
| Prepaid partner inventory | 0.4 |
| Goodwill / intangibles (krip) | 1.0 |
| Fixed assets, deposits | 0.6 |
| Total assets | 13.3 |
| Deferred Max Miles liability | 6.2 |
| Trade payables and accruals | 1.4 |
| Deferred First access fees | 0.3 |
| Net assets | 5.4 |
Runway, honestly
Net monthly cash burn is roughly US$0.2M — near cash-flow neutral — on ~US$9.5M of cash. On a cash basis that is 36+ months.
But the deferred miles liability grows at roughly US$400k a month. Cash-flow neutrality funded by a growing deferred obligation is a form of borrowing from your own customers. The real burn is closer to US$0.6M a month, and the honest runway on net assets is ~15 months, not 36.
HeyMax does not need to raise in 2026 — and probably should not.
Capital efficiency
Revenue / capital raised0.44×Median APAC consumer fintech at Series A: 0.15–0.25×
Revenue per FTE$200kFY2025, 30 people
Years to US$6M ARR~2.5From founding
Markets used1A city-state of 6 million people
That last figure deserves emphasis. HeyMax built a ~US$6M business in one city-state. If per-capita monetisation is even half as good in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Australia and urban Japan, the addressable revenue from the announced market set is 8–12× the Singapore base. That is the Series B story, and it is a genuinely good one.
13
Funding, cap table and valuation
Seed — US$2.6M · 2 July 2024
Lead: January Capital. With: Tenity, Ascend Angels, XA Network. At close: 50k users, 50M miles earned, 10k flights, 500+ businesses. Est. post-money: US$12–16M.
Series A — US$11M · 28 January 2026
Lead: Peak XV Partners. With: Betatron Venture Group, January Capital, Tenity. Angels: Rob Rosenstein (Agoda co-founder & Chairman) and David Lee (former President, Visa Asia Pacific). Est. post-money: US$50–61M — roughly 8.3–10.2× trailing ARR.
This is a distribution cap table, not a funding one
Rosenstein brings travel distribution at scale, hotel and airline supply relationships, and the scars of building an OTA against entrenched incumbents in exactly HeyMax's geography. Lee brings issuer and network relationships and bank-board-level regulatory instincts. Those two map precisely onto HeyMax's two hardest go-to-market problems: redemption supply and issuer distribution. For a company at this stage that is worth more than the US$11M.
Valuation triangulation
| Method | Input | Implied value |
|---|---|---|
| Consumer fintech multiple | 4–6× FY2026E US$14M | US$56–84M |
| Loyalty infrastructure multiple | 8–12× FY2026E US$14M | US$112–168M |
| Forward revenue | 6× FY2027E US$26M | US$156M |
| ShopBack comparable | US$1.4B on ~US$99M = 14.1× | US$197M |
| Bilt Rewards comparable | US$10.75B, ~10.8× forward | — |
| Mid-2026 fair value | Depends entirely on framing | US$85–130M |
The valuation gap between "consumer app" and "loyalty infrastructure" framings is roughly US$45M today and US$150M+ by 2028. Managing that framing is not spin — it requires the revenue mix to actually change.
14
The metrics, decoded
Growth is decelerating sharply against a 1M target
Jul 2024 → May 2025: +140% in ten months. May 2025 → Jan 2026: +25% in eight. Annualised, growth fell from ~180% to ~40%. The 1,000,000-user target for end-2026 requires 6.7× growth in eleven months from a base that grew 25% in the preceding eight. On the current trajectory HeyMax reaches 220,000–280,000. Estimate
Seven things the metrics reveal that the press releases do not
- Revenue was flat between May 2025 and January 2026 — at least as disclosed. "~US$6M annualised, 5× YoY" appears in both the May 2025 metrics release and the January 2026 Series A announcement. Either revenue genuinely plateaued for eight months, or a stale figure was reused. I lean toward the latter — which means my FY2026 forecast may be conservative — but the ambiguity is HeyMax's own doing and it will be probed.
- User growth decelerated from +180% to +40% annualised.
- The redemption ratio will get worse. 9.9% cumulative today. Every point of increase costs roughly US$60k a year at current issuance. A move from 10% to 40% — entirely plausible over 24 months — is a US$1.8M annual swing against a US$6M revenue base.
- Transfer partners went backwards — 37 → ~20 against a 50+ target for 2027. That is now a 2.5× build in eighteen months from a reduced base, while simultaneously trying to lower cost per mile. Those objectives are in direct tension.
- The 2-billion-miles target implies 4× issuance growth — and at 1.16¢, two billion miles is US$17.7M of accruing reward cost, larger than my entire FY2026 revenue forecast. It is only coherent if the mix shifts hard toward B2B issuance where the buyer pays cash upfront.
- Merchant growth is the healthiest line on the board — 500 → 800 in eight months, on the way to 1,000.
- MAU has not been disclosed since Q1 2025. Sixteen months of silence on the most important engagement metric, from a company that otherwise discloses generously. The most likely explanation is that MAU has not kept pace with registered-user growth — and it is precisely the number a Series B lead will ask for first.
The seven metrics HeyMax should publish and does not
MAU and DAU · outstanding Max Miles liability with a stated breakage assumption · cumulative redemption rate, quarterly · revenue mix · cohort retention at month 12 and 24 · first-redemption rate and median time to first redemption · revenue by market. Publishing the second, third and sixth before a Series B process — rather than during one — would be the highest-return investor-relations decision available to this company.
15
Market definition and sizing
HeyMax sits at the intersection of four industries, and the choice of which one it "is in" swings its addressable market by two orders of magnitude and its valuation multiple by 3×. This is not semantics — it is the central framing decision of the Series B.
| Framing | Global size | Multiple | HeyMax's honest position |
|---|---|---|---|
| Affiliate publisher | ~US$18–20B spend; APAC 19% | 2–4× | Where 58% of revenue comes from today |
| Consumer loyalty app | US$142B+ programme spend | 3–5× | The consumer-facing identity |
| Loyalty infrastructure | US$15.6B (2026) → US$32.0B (2034), 11.2% CAGR | 8–15× | Where the strategy is heading |
| Travel rewards | US$343B (2025) → US$540B (2035); APAC ~24% | 4–8× | Where the redemption value lives |
HeyMax is a loyalty-infrastructure business currently earning affiliate-publisher revenue. The gap between those is the strategic distance it has to travel.
Serviceable market — the announced footprint
| Market | Loyalty market size | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Singapore | US$501.5M (2025) | +14.4% p.a. |
| Hong Kong | ~US$450M Est | Similar per-capita, larger population |
| Japan | US$3.12B → US$5.48B by 2030 | Largest opportunity; hardest to enter |
| Australia | US$1.84B (2026) → US$2.87B (2030) | 11.6% CAGR |
| Taiwan | ~US$600M Est | Structurally similar to Hong Kong |
| Total SAM | ≈US$6.9B (2026) → ≈US$11B (2030) | — |
Realistic capture: 1.5% of SG+HK in 2026 (US$14M) → 1.6% of the full five-market SAM by 2031 (US$175M). Note the shape — market share stays roughly flat while revenue grows 12×, because growth comes from market entry, not share gain. HeyMax's story is replication of a proven single-market model, not a share war. Replication stories raise money more reliably, and are easier to underwrite.
Six tailwinds
- Interchange compression has pushed 40%+ of card revenue into loyalty; issuers increasingly want to outsource it
- APAC travellers are 50% more likely than European or US travellers to increase travel spend
- Fragmentation is the problem HeyMax was built for — every weak programme is a potential Max Miles issuer
- Coalition programmes are consolidating and short of redemption value
- 55% of Singaporeans choose cards primarily for rewards
- MAS has explicitly declined to regulate retail loyalty as payment services
Six headwinds
- Airline mile costs are inflating — American at US$0.035/mile is the extreme HeyMax cited
- Devaluation is endemic and HeyMax now participates in it
- Third-party cookie deprecation degrades affiliate attribution
- Incumbent counter-moves already visible (Agoda × Mastercard)
- Rewards spending is discretionary and pro-cyclical
- Japan is uniquely hard — Rakuten 59.3%, dPoint 38.9%, PayPay 38.1% penetration
16
The competitive landscape
| HeyMax | ShopBack | Kris+ | Ascenda | Agoda×MC | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Currency | Max Miles (open-loop) | Cash | KrisFlyer (closed) | Client's own | Client's own |
| Airline transferable | Yes, ~20 partners | No | Is an airline | Yes (B2B rails) | Via inventory |
| Users | 150k | 60M | Millions (SG) | B2B only | Bank customers |
| Markets | 2 → 5 | 13 | 3 cities | Global B2B | APAC banks |
| Revenue | ~US$6M | ~US$99M | Internal | Undisclosed | Undisclosed |
| Valuation | US$50–61M | US$1.4B | — | — | — |
| Profitability | Near cash-neutral | Adj. EBITDA+ 3 qtrs | — | Revenue −5.8% (2024) | — |
| Cash-out | FlyAnywhere 1.8¢ | Cash — native | No | — | No |
| Key advantage | Open-loop currency + cash floor | Scale, merchants, capital | Owns the miles | Bank relationships | Distribution |
| Key weakness | Sub-scale; mile cost inflating | No miles currency | Closed loop; devaluing | No consumer demand | New; no consumer brand |
Where the pressure will actually come from
| Threat | Probability | Impact | HeyMax's defence |
|---|---|---|---|
| ShopBack adds a miles currency | Med-High | Severe | Speed and transfer-partner lock-in — not product superiority |
| Ascenda wins the bank accounts | High | High | Direct airline contracts; consumer-demand proof Ascenda structurally cannot offer |
| Network-embedded redemption (Agoda×MC) | Certain | High | A transferable currency the consumer owns ≠ a redemption catalogue. Must be said loudly and often |
| Airline point prices inflate | High | High | Multi-year direct contracts with volume tiers and price protection |
| Redemption rate rises faster than modelled | High | High | Actuarial modelling; channel steering; surgical transfer bonuses |
| SIA restricts KrisFlyer access | Low-Med | High in SG | Formalise the relationship; diversify redemption depth |
The most durable thing about this business
Counter-positioning. Singapore Airlines cannot make Kris+ open-loop — letting members convert KrisFlyer miles to Cathay would destroy its own loyalty economics. DBS cannot make its points freely transferable without giving up the lock-in that justifies the programme. Ascenda cannot build a consumer brand without competing with the banks that pay it. Agoda cannot be airline-neutral, because it has its own inventory to fill.
Every serious incumbent has a reason not to do what HeyMax does. That is worth more than any feature — and it is the strongest available answer to "why won't ShopBack just do this?"
Bilt Rewards — the proof of what this category can become
Bilt lets you earn transferable points on rent. It has raised ~US$958M from General Catalyst, Mastercard and Wells Fargo, and is valued at US$10.75 billion. It validates HeyMax's category at the highest possible level — and it teaches one specific lesson: Bilt did not win by aggregating small discretionary purchases. It won by owning one enormous, recurring, previously-unrewarded spend category. HeyMax's analogue is not "more merchants" — it is utilities, insurance premiums, school fees, healthcare, rent. The Chocolate Finance deal's inclusion of exactly those categories was the most strategically interesting thing in that partnership, and it was treated as a footnote.
17
Regulation and structural risk
HeyMax operates without a payment institution licence, and the reason is precise. Under Singapore's Payment Services Act 2019, "limited purpose e-money" is excluded from regulation, and MAS has stated publicly that it does not intend for retail loyalty programmes to be regulated as payment services. Its published assessment factors are whether the programme is marketed as loyalty or as a payment service, and whether any part of it conflicts with the objective of promoting purchases from the issuer or specified merchants.
HeyMax's Terms clause 6 is drafted precisely against those tests. But three features push toward the boundary, and all three are becoming more prominent:
- FlyAnywhere converts miles to cash. Framed as reimbursement against a qualifying travel purchase — but the economic substance is redeeming a stored balance for money at a published rate.
- HeyMax First takes cash in advance for future value. That is a purchase of loyalty currency, not an earned reward.
- The currency is increasingly general-purpose — 800+ merchants, transit, Octopus payments, coalition conversion, cash-out. The broader the acceptance, the weaker "limited purpose" becomes.
The current position is defensible, but the trajectory is toward the boundary, not away from it. This should be actively managed with counsel and ideally an informal MAS engagement — it is exactly the kind of issue that surfaces in Series B legal diligence and, unmanaged, can reprice a round. Inference
The BNPL question
HeyMax First escapes BNPL characterisation today because there is no interest, no credit assessment, no enforceable repayment obligation, no deadline, and no debt collection — and because Singapore's BNPL regime is a voluntary Code of Conduct rather than licensing. Recommendation: treat it as if regulated anyway — affordability signals, drawdown limits proportionate to earning history, clear disclosure of effective cost per mile versus the FlyAnywhere floor, and a published hardship policy. Cheap now, expensive later.
Expansion compliance
Hong Kong: Stored Value Facilities licensing. Japan: the Payment Services Act on prepaid instruments — the highest compliance burden of the announced markets. Australia: ASIC on consumer credit if HeyMax First is offered, plus an ACCC that has run a dedicated loyalty-schemes review. Taiwan: FSC oversight. There is no compliance or legal hire among the eleven open roles.
18
Strategic position and moat
Strengths
- The only open-loop transferable travel currency of scale in SEA
- FlyAnywhere — a genuine category first and the currency's floor
- Very low CAC, paid in self-issued currency
- Exceptional capital efficiency (0.44× revenue-to-capital)
- Community and editorial credibility that cannot be bought quickly
- A distribution cap table
- A proven, fast, cheap market-entry playbook (krip → HK in four months)
- Card intelligence across 17 issuers — an unglamorous, real barrier
- Two coalition partnerships (yuu, Octopus)
Weaknesses
- Undisclosed, growing miles liability (~US$6.2M)
- 58% of revenue from low-defensibility affiliate
- Share of wallet ~7–12% of addressable spend
- User growth decelerating; the 1M target is unreachable organically
- Transfer partners went backwards against a 50+ target
- Marketing/terms contradiction on expiry
- Visa-only card linking
- Dependency on Ascenda, a direct competitor
- No risk, actuarial, compliance, finance or BD roles open
- Four competing self-descriptions
Opportunities
- Shift mix to B2B where HeyMax sets the price — 3–5× multiple expansion
- Close share of wallet 10% → 25% — 2.5× revenue with zero new users
- One coalition partnership per market — the only realistic route to 1M users
- Direct airline contracts — 15–25% COGS reduction
- Monetise card referrals properly — US$1–3M at ~95% margin
- The "Bilt move": own one huge recurring spend category
- Multi-network card linking — +50–80% addressable users
- Premium consumer tier (Kudos charges US$72/yr for less)
- HeyMax First at scale — US$12M at 2% attach on 1M users
Threats
- ShopBack launches a miles currency
- Ascenda wins the bank accounts HeyMax needs
- Network-embedded redemption (Agoda × Mastercard)
- Airline point prices inflate — direct COGS, no hedge
- Redemption rate rises faster than modelled
- Cookie/attribution deprecation
- Regulatory reclassification (PSA or BNPL)
- A trust event from a fourth devaluation
- Japan entry fails against Rakuten/dPoint/PayPay
Moat, graded honestly
Network effects (user-to-user)F
Network effects (two-sided)C
Switching costsC+
Scale economiesC
Brand (within the subculture)B−
Supply-side lock-inC → A
Data / proprietary intelligenceB−
Counter-positioningB+
The uncomfortable truth
HeyMax's current protection is speed and focus, not structure. It is ahead because it started first and executes fast, not because it is hard to attack. That is a perfectly good position for a Series A company and an untenable one for a Series C company. The 24 months from mid-2026 to mid-2028 are the window to convert a speed advantage into a structural one — and the only assets that can do that are direct redemption contracts and coalition relationships.
19
The risk register
| # | Risk | Score | Mitigation |
|---|---|---|---|
| R1 | Miles liability crystallises faster than modelled — each 10pp of redemption costs ~US$610k/yr | 9.0 | Build and publish an actuarial model; tier redemption cost by channel; steer to cheaper channels; use transfer bonuses as timed liability-management tools |
| R2 | Trust event from a devaluation, especially with First members holding negative balances | 7.5 | Publish a Max Miles Value Charter: 60-day minimum notice, a FlyAnywhere floor commitment, honouring in-flight drawdowns at the old rate |
| R3 | ShopBack or a funded follower launches a transferable miles currency | 7.5 | Lock preferential-tier airline agreements now; deepen coalition ties; multi-year B2B contracts |
| R4 | B2B stalls; mix stays affiliate-dominant → low multiple, hard Series B | 7.0 | Hire a senior enterprise commercial leader; publish API docs, pricing, security posture; land one Tier-1 bank |
| R5 | Airline point prices inflate; COGS rises with no hedge | 7.0 | Direct multi-year contracts with volume tiers and price protection; diversify redemption mix |
| R6 | Growth stalls; the 1M target is missed publicly | 6.0 | Reset the target to an engagement metric; pursue coalition migrations over organic signups |
| R7 | Marketing/terms contradiction becomes a consumer-protection or press story | 6.0 | Amend clause 4 or qualify the claim. Cheapest fix in this report |
| R8 | Attribution decay from cookie deprecation | 6.0 | Shift weight to card-linked earning, in-app commerce, gift cards, B2B issuance |
| R9 | HeyMax First adverse selection / mass non-repayment | 5.5 | Scale Miles Pool to demonstrated earning history; cap first-year drawdown; monitor cohort repayment as a first-class metric |
| R10 | Ascenda dependency exploited — pricing, access, or competitive visibility | 5.5 | Accelerate direct integrations; dual-source; renegotiate on volume |
| R11 | Regulatory reclassification (PSA limited-purpose or BNPL) | 5.0 | Proactive counsel opinion; informal MAS engagement; voluntary BNPL-style safeguards |
| R12 | Expansion overreach — five markets, sixty people, eighteen months | 5.0 | Partner-led entry only; no consumer launch without a coalition anchor |
20
How HeyMax raises its next rounds
Core recommendation
Do not raise in 2026. HeyMax raised US$11M in January, holds ~US$9.5M, is roughly cash-flow neutral, and has 36 months of cash runway. Raising now means raising on trailing metrics showing decelerating user growth, a reduced transfer-partner count, and a revenue figure restated unchanged across two announcements. Raise in Q2–Q3 2027, on audited FY2026 results plus H1 2027 momentum, with eighteen months of deliberate metric construction in between.
TimingQ2–Q3 '27Process opens ~April 2027
Size$25–35MSeries B
Post-money$140–200M17–20% dilution
Strategic co-investorAirlineConverts the largest supply risk into alignment
The twelve gating metrics
| Metric | Now | Series B requirement | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| ARR | ~US$14M | US$20M+ | Scale threshold for a US$150M+ valuation |
| B2B share of revenue | ~19% | 40%+ | The single most important metric — determines whether the multiple is 4× or 10× |
| Growth rate | ~2.3× | 1.8×+ sustained | Must not be seen decelerating below 70% |
| Revenue outside Singapore | ~8% | 20%+ | Proves the expansion thesis is real |
| Tier-1 issuer logos | 0 | 1–2 | The proof point that unlocks enterprise |
| Direct redemption partners | ~20 | 35+, majority direct | Reduces COGS and builds the moat |
| Published liability model | None | Audited | Turns the biggest diligence risk into a credibility asset |
| MAU | Dark since Q1'25 | 250k+, quarterly | The absence is itself a red flag |
| Gross margin (accrual) | ~51% | 58%+ | Demonstrates COGS control |
| Net revenue retention (B2B) | Unknown | 110%+ | The metric that earns infrastructure multiples |
| Cohort month-12 activity | Unknown | Disclosed, 35%+ | Answers the retention question before it is asked |
| First-redemption rate | Unknown | 45% within 12 mo | The true product-market-fit measure in loyalty |
The narrative is worth US$80–120M
What HeyMax says now
"AI-powered loyalty and travel rewards platform. 150,000 users. 800 merchants. 500 million miles. Expanding across APAC."
That is a consumer app story. It prices at 4–6× revenue. On US$20M: US$80–120M — below target.
What it should say
"We are the redemption network for Asia's loyalty economy. Every bank, coalition and retailer in Asia has a points programme its customers don't value. We fixed that with one API. We proved the demand ourselves — our consumer business isn't the business, it's the demand proof, the pricing engine and the moat."
That is an infrastructure story. It prices at 8–12×. On US$20M: US$160–240M.
The narrative change is worth roughly US$80–120M of valuation — and it is only credible if the B2B mix and the bank logos are actually real. Strategy and story have to move together.
Seven things to have ready before the process opens
The audited miles-liability model · revenue by stream and market with four quarters of history · cohort retention and first-redemption curves · the B2B contract book (TCV, ACV, terms, NRR, pipeline) · airline and hotel contract summary (direct vs intermediated, pricing tiers, change-of-control) · a regulatory opinion covering PSA classification, HeyMax First's characterisation and the expansion markets · and a documented answer on the stale revenue figure.
Acquisition is a legitimate parallel path
Plausible acquirers: ShopBack (buy the currency), Ascenda (buy consumer demand), a bank (buy the rewards layer), an OTA (buy loyalty), Bilt (buy APAC). At US$150–400M for a company that raised US$13.6M, this is a very good outcome — and it should be run in parallel, not treated as failure.
21
How HeyMax becomes market leader
HeyMax cannot lead "loyalty in Asia," "cashback in Asia," or "travel booking." It can lead — and largely already does — the open-loop travel currency and redemption network for Asia-Pacific: the layer that turns any programme's points into any airline's miles. Leadership means one specific thing: when any bank, coalition, retailer or fintech in APAC decides its points need travel redemption, HeyMax is the first call.
Pillar 1 — Own redemption supply. Don't rent it.
Direct-contract the top 20 programmes with multi-year terms, volume-tiered pricing and price-change notice provisions. Reinstate the highest-demand programmes lost in June 2026 — Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt — on workable direct economics. Pursue preferential-tier arrangements ("best available rate to a non-bank partner in SEA"). Bring an airline group onto the cap table. Target: 50 partners by end-2027, 35+ direct-contracted.
Why this is first: it is the only action that pays off three ways — it cuts COGS, builds the only real moat available, and removes the Ascenda dependency.
Pillar 2 — Make B2B the business, and say so
Hire a Chief Commercial Officer with airline-loyalty or card-network P&L experience — the single most important hire in the company, sourced through David Lee's network. Publish the platform: API reference, sandbox, pricing tiers, SLA, and a security page with a SOC 2 roadmap. Productise three SKUs: Max Miles Issuance, Redemption-as-a-Service, Full Loyalty Stack. Land two lighthouse accounts by Q2 2027 — price for the logo, not the margin. Target: 40% of revenue B2B by end-2027, 55% by 2029.
Pillar 3 — Grow through coalitions, not signups
| Market | Target coalition | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| Singapore | yuu Rewards Club Live | Two-way conversion since June 2026 |
| Hong Kong | Octopus Live + MTR Club | Deepen from campaign to permanent earn |
| Taiwan | Line Points, iPASS, Uni-President | Line dominates Taiwanese digital life |
| Australia | Flybuys (8.6M members) or Everyday Rewards | A single deal addressing 57× HeyMax's entire user base at zero CAC |
| Japan | Ponta, or a regional bank / JCB consortium — not Rakuten | JCB is a natural ally against Visa/Mastercard network plays |
| Malaysia | BonusLink, Touch 'n Go | KL team already in place |
Also: reset the 1M-user target publicly. Replace it with MAU, share of wallet, or miles redeemed. Missing a loudly-stated public target damages Series B credibility far more than changing it does.
Pillar 4 — Close the share-of-wallet gap
Four moves. Multi-network card linking (Mastercard, then Amex) — Visa-only is the largest single constraint in the consumer product. Card-linked offers as the default earn mechanism — every mile earned without a click is a mile that does not generate a missing-miles ticket, solving the top support category and the top experience complaint simultaneously. Own one enormous recurring category — insurance premiums, utilities, school fees, healthcare, rent. Aggressive defaults — extension auto-activation, one-tap re-earn, card-signal-triggered notifications. Target: 3,300 → 8,000+ miles per active user per year by end-2027 = 2.4× revenue at constant users.
Pillar 5 — Defend the currency's credibility as a first-class asset
Publish a Max Miles Value Charter: minimum 60-day notice on any transfer-ratio reduction or partner removal; a FlyAnywhere floor commitment; honouring in-flight HeyMax First drawdowns at drawdown-date ratios. Fix the expiry contradiction. Publish the liability and breakage assumptions. Keep investing in editorial credibility — and brief the specialist press before changes, not after.
The expansion call
Do not launch in Japan as a consumer brand in 2026 or 2027. Rakuten Points sits at 59.3% consumer penetration, dPoint at 38.9%, PayPay at 38.1%. Those are ecosystems with telecoms, banks and payments attached; a foreign open-loop currency has no consumer wedge. But every one of them needs better travel redemption — which is exactly what HeyMax sells. Japan is a B2B market for HeyMax, not a consumer one. Adding JAL Mileage Bank in July 2026 was the right first move.
Generalised: slow the consumer expansion, accelerate the B2B expansion. B2B entry needs a contract and an integration — not a marketing team, a support hub and a brand. It is faster, cheaper, higher-margin, more defensible, and available in all five announced markets immediately.
22
How HeyMax becomes profitable
Two costs dominate: rewards at 45% of revenue and people at 28%. Everything else is rounding. Profitability is therefore a two-variable problem — make each mile cheaper or worth more, and grow revenue faster than headcount.
Three scenarios to profitability
Base case (55% likelihood): EBITDA breakeven in H2 2027 at ~US$24M revenue and ~62 people; 13% margins in 2028, 21% in 2029. Aggressive (20%): two Tier-1 bank contracts land, B2B hits 45%, EBITDA positive from Q4 2027, supporting a US$550–800M Series C. Conservative (25%): B2B stalls at 25%, redemption rises to 85%, ShopBack enters — EBITDA negative through 2029, requiring another US$20M+ and pricing as a consumer app. Model
The five levers, ranked by impact
| # | Lever | Impact | Difficulty | Timeline |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Shift revenue mix to B2B — become a price-setter | +8–12 pts gross margin, plus cash-upfront working capital | High | 18–30 mo |
| 2 | Reduce the true cost of a mile — direct contracts, channel steering, surgical bonuses | 1.55¢ → 1.25¢ = 19% COGS cut ≈ US$1.2M/yr gross profit | Medium | 12–24 mo |
| 3 | Close the share-of-wallet gap | +80–140% revenue on the same user base — the largest lever in the model | Medium | 12–24 mo |
| 4 | Monetise underpriced surfaces — card referrals, media rate card, premium tier, HeyMax First | +US$2–4M high-margin revenue | Low | 6–12 mo |
| 5 | Grow revenue faster than headcount — weight hiring offshore, volume through partners | −10 to −15 pts of opex ratio | Medium | Continuous |
What actually moves the number
Two numbers decide whether HeyMax is a profitable company: miles per active user, and ultimate redemption rate. The first is a growth metric HeyMax controls through product. The second is a cost metric it can only manage. Every strategic decision should be evaluated against its effect on those two — if a proposed feature moves neither, it probably isn't worth building.
The profitability verdict
Yes — and sooner than most consumer fintechs, because the cost base is genuinely small and the revenue is genuinely real. But not on the current configuration. The configuration that reaches durable profit is: B2B at 40%+ of revenue · direct airline contracts · share of wallet at 25%+ · partner-led expansion · headcount discipline weighted offshore. Every one of those five is a decision, not a discovery — and all five can be made in the next twelve months.
23
The 24-month operating plan
| # | Action | Owner | Success measure |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Build the miles liability model | CEO + Head of Finance | Board-reviewed by 31 Oct 2026, refreshed monthly. Nothing else matters as much. |
| 2 | Hire a Chief Commercial Officer | CEO + board | Hired by Q1 2027; two Tier-1 conversations at term-sheet stage by Q2 2027 |
| 3 | Fix the expiry contradiction; publish a Max Miles Value Charter | CEO + Legal | Published by Q4 2026. Cheapest high-return action available |
| 4 | Publish the B2B platform — docs, pricing, SLA, security | CTO + Product | Live by Q1 2027; 20+ inbound qualified enquiries per quarter |
| 5 | Launch multi-network card linking | Product + Partnerships | Mastercard live by Q2 2027; +50% linked-card coverage per user |
| 6 | Begin the direct-contracting programme | CCO | 12 direct contracts by Q4 2027; cost per redeemed mile below 1.35¢ |
| 7 | Sign one coalition partner in Australia | CCO + CEO | Signed by Q3 2027; 100k+ members converting within two quarters |
| 8 | Reset the public growth target | CEO | MAU disclosed from Q4 2026; no missed public target in the Series B window |
| 9 | Own one large recurring spend category (the "Bilt move") | Product + Partnerships | One category live at scale by Q4 2027, contributing 10%+ of routed GMV |
| 10 | Land two lighthouse B2B accounts | CCO | Both signed by Q4 2027; B2B at 35%+ of revenue |
| 11 | Enter Japan B2B-only | CCO | One Japanese B2B contract by Q2 2028; zero consumer marketing spend in Japan |
| 12 | Run redemption-cost management as a formal discipline | Finance + Product | Cost per redeemed mile falls four consecutive quarters |
| Quarter | Milestones |
|---|---|
| Q4 2026 | Liability model live · Value Charter published · expiry contradiction fixed · MAU disclosure resumes · CCO search underway |
| Q1 2027 | CCO hired · B2B platform docs and pricing live · direct-contracting programme opens |
| Q2 2027 | Mastercard linking live · Series B process opens · 6+ direct airline contracts |
| Q3 2027 | Australia coalition signed · Series B closed, US$25–35M at US$140–200M · B2B at 30% |
| Q4 2027 | Two lighthouse B2B accounts live · recurring-payments category at scale · EBITDA breakeven · 12 direct contracts |
| 2028 | Japan B2B live · Taiwan entry · B2B at 42% · revenue US$42M · EBITDA US$5.5M (13%) |
24
Scorecard and verdict
ProductA−
Market opportunityA
ExecutionA−
TeamB+
Financial positionB+
Unit economicsB
Business modelB−
Governance & transparencyB−
Competitive moatC+
Growth trajectoryC+
Strategic clarityC+
OverallB / B+
HeyMax has done something difficult and rare: it created a private currency that people actually want, in under three years, on thirteen million dollars, in one small market. FlyAnywhere gave that currency a floor — the single hardest and most valuable thing a currency issuer can do. The coalition deals gave it liquidity. The community gave it credibility.
It is now at the point every loyalty programme reaches, usually less publicly: the moment when the true cost of the currency becomes visible. The three 2026 devaluations, the killed programme, the seventeen removed partners, and the launch of a product that sells miles forward at 2.3–3.0¢ are all the same event viewed from different angles.
Handled well, this is the transition from a startup that gives things away to a business that knows its margins. Handled badly, it is the slow erosion of the trust that made the currency valuable — and once a loyalty currency's credibility goes, it does not come back.
What would make me more positive
- MAU disclosed above 80,000
- A Tier-1 bank or telco announced as issuing Max Miles
- FY2026 revenue above US$18M
- Direct airline contracts replacing Ascenda on the top five partners
- A second coalition deal on yuu's terms outside Singapore
- HeyMax publishing its miles liability voluntarily
What would make me more negative
- MAU disclosed below 50,000
- The FlyAnywhere 1.8¢ floor being cut — qualitatively different from the Accor devaluation, because the floor is the credibility
- ShopBack, Grab or a bank launching a transferable travel currency in Singapore
- A fourth devaluation inside twelve months
- HeyMax First drawdowns growing much faster than reclaims
- Consumer launches in Japan, Taiwan and Australia simultaneously
- Cash below US$5M with no Series B process open
The asset that doesn't appear in any metric
The most valuable thing HeyMax owns is not its currency, its merchants or its technology. It is that four engineers who lost their jobs in 2022 built, in three years, something that a fifty-billion-dollar airline, a billion-dollar cashback platform and every bank in Singapore looked at and concluded they could not build without cannibalising themselves.
That is a real position. It is worth defending properly.
HeyMax built a currency people want and is now discovering what it costs — and whether it becomes the loyalty infrastructure of Asia or a well-executed affiliate business with a clever rewards wrapper depends almost entirely on whether it moves the majority of its revenue to the side of the business where it, rather than the market, sets the price.
—
Method, limitations and sources
What was done. Systematic review of every publicly-reachable HeyMax property — web app, marketing site, business site, Terms of Use, help centre (~115 articles across 8 collections), blog archive, app store and extension listings, careers portal — rendered in a headless browser where content is client-side. Full review of independent specialist coverage, prioritising The MileLion and Sethisfy as the most rigorous voices in this market. All traceable funding, partnership and press announcements from 2024 to July 2026. Competitor and market-sizing research. Regulatory research against MAS primary sources.
What was not available. No financial statements, ACRA filings, cap table, board materials, contracts, cohort data or management access. No MAU disclosure after Q1 2025. No revenue segmentation. No disclosure of krip consideration, HeyMax First uptake, B2B contract values, or miles-liability accounting.
| Assumption | Value used | If wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Ultimate redemption rate | 75% | ±10pp moves cost per issued mile ±14% and FY2028 EBITDA by ∓US$2.4M |
| Blended cost per redeemed mile | 1.55¢ | ±0.2¢ moves gross margin ±5pp |
| FY2026 revenue | US$14M | If the Jan-2026 US$6M figure was stale, actual is likely higher and the forecast is conservative |
| Affiliate take rate | 4.6% | Independently validated against disclosed revenue ÷ disclosed volume |
| B2B revenue share | ~19% | Not disclosed. The most consequential unknown in the entire model |
Principal sources
Primary: heymax.ai (homepage, /business, /company/terms, /company/careers, /merchant/* pages) · marketing.heymax.ai · help.heymax.ai · blog.heymax.ai news archive · Terms of Use (6 Feb 2025) · Apple App Store and Google Play listings · Chrome Web Store · Product Hunt · careers-page.com/heymax · LinkedIn. Press & funding: Fintech Singapore · PR Newswire APAC · TechNode Global · Entrepreneur APAC · WebInTravel · Tech Edition · Yahoo Finance · The Manila Times · StartmeupHK · Moodie Davitt Report · The Asian Banker · January Capital "The First" podcast Ep. 7 · BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech Podcast Ep. 644. Independent analysis: The MileLion (Aaron Wong) — fourteen separate articles from Apr 2024 to Jul 2026 · Sethisfy · Loyalty & Reward Co · SingSaver · Wise · MoneyBees · HardwareZone forums. Competitors & market: Tracxn · PitchBook · Crunchbase News · FinTech Futures · Bilt newsroom · Agoda/Mastercard releases · Klook Travel Pulse 2026 · Singapore, Japan and Australia loyalty market reports · Global Loyalty Management Market · Travel Loyalty Program Market. Regulatory: Monetary Authority of Singapore — Payment Services Act 2019, PSA FAQs, and published guidance on loyalty programme regulation.
A note on independence
This analysis was produced without HeyMax's involvement, cooperation or review. It is deliberately critical where criticism is warranted and complimentary where achievement is real. Nothing here is investment advice, and no representation is made that the estimates are accurate — they are shown with their derivations precisely so a reader with better inputs can replace them.
ATLAS
The Award Chart Atlas
Every airline loyalty programme in the world, what each one is unusually good at, who you can transfer into it from, and what changed this hour. Search it, filter it, or browse by route.
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Coverage — read this first
This atlas is being built out programme by programme. Every entry below is individually researched and sourced, but the set is not yet complete. Missing programmes are absent, never guessed — and where a programme genuinely has no sweet spot, it says so rather than inventing one.