Staax

Staax is a financial technology company developing a social, investment-based peer-to-peer payment platform. The company's platform works to allow users to create value from transactions by allowing them to invest in stocks through payments, pay others in stocks, purchase or gift fractional stocks, and generate wealth. When users send stock to someone, the transaction appears in a public feed, similar to cash payment apps like Venmo. The company was founded in 2021 and participated in Techstars Class 263. Founded by CEO Nikki Varansi, Lucy Yang, and Victoria Yang, the company is headquartered in San Francisco.

Through the company's application, users are able to link an account—which counts as a brokerage account facilitated by Staax's partner, Alpaca—and set up a user profile, which includes picking top-five favorite stocks or exchange-traded funds (ETFs). When reimbursed, the users can receive fractional shares of stocks, allowing them to generate an investment portfolio and enjoy the perks of investing. The service is intended to be paperless and work quickly, and users can choose at any time to receive reimbursement as cash rather than stock. The application has a social user feed, which shows other users who are receiving and sending stocks to each other through the application. And it offers real-time financial information and potential insights about a user's portfolio.

Users interested in privacy can opt to keep their feed private, and other users will only see their favorite stocks. Selling stocks does not trigger tax events, but in the case of a sell-off or liquidation of an individual's portfolio, Staax sends them a Form 1099 at the end of the year for tax processing.

In the case in which a user sends a stock and the price moves before it is accepted, the recipient of the share can either accept the original price in cash or pay the difference in price, when the price moves up; when the price moves down, the receiver can earn more fractional shares of a stock. As of October 2022, Staax does not have a clear monetization policy but has considered taking payment for order flow (PFOF) from market makers, similar to Robinhood, which allows the app to remain free for users.