Stax Secures $500k Funding from SDF Fund to Enable Borderless Payment in Africa
Stax, a universal money app created by Hover Developer Services, Inc., has received a $500,000 investment from the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) through its Matching Fund. SDF introduced a $30 million matching fund in March 2022 to support Blockchain-based startups. The Fund is intended for pre-seed to Series B businesses who want to develop on the Stellar Blockchain.
According to SDF, the cash will support Stax in establishing a cheap, borderless mobile wallet on the Stellar Blockchain. Through automated USSD codes, Stax enables customers to buy airtime, send and receive money, and move money between accounts.
Ben Lyon, CEO of Hover Developer Services, Inc., expressed excitement about integrating with Stellar to realize his company’s ambition of an offline payment superapp.
“We are excited to integrate with Stellar to bring our vision of an offline payment superapp to life. Together [with SDF], we plan to make the dollar digital currency, USDC on Stellar and many other tokens broadly available to smartphone users with limited mobile data connectivity across Africa. As with our existing service, Stax’s multi-token wallet will be non-custodial, meaning we have zero access to user funds,” Lyon said.
To promote the Blockchain-focused concepts of African developers and entrepreneurs, SDF and DFS Lab established a Blockchain bootcamp. Stax attended the bootcamp in 2021 and received a $15,000 prize for its initiatives to make USDC available to data-conscious smartphone consumers. SDF has now increased its support by investing $500,000 in Hover Developer Services, Inc.
After Stax announced a $2.2 million Seed extension round from World Within Ventures, Noemis Ventures, Launch Africa Ventures, Orange DAO, Manhattan West, and Decentralized VC, joining Anthemis Group, 500 Startups, Garuda Ventures, GAN Ventures, and numerous angel investors on the cap table, this announcement comes shortly after.
What Stax Offers
By leveraging USSD codes, Stax increases its consumers’ access to digital financial services while enabling them to avoid the hefty fees associated with using mobile data. Stax wants to make USD Coin (USDC), a fully-reserved dollar digital currency on Stellar, more accessible to users who desire a secure place to hold their money, access global investment possibilities, and engage in borderless trade, in light of the difficulties associated with such transactions.
Through USDC on Stellar, Stax aims to make it easier to transfer money inside Africa and between Africa and the rest of the globe. For Stax people looking to preserve their hard-earned cash in the goal of financial freedom, USDC offers a wonderful starting point into the world of cryptocurrencies.
“Hover’s Stax app offers a more user-friendly, low-friction solution for customers who want to leverage USSD technology to buy airtime and access financial services,” said Denelle Dixon, CEO and Executive Director of the Stellar Development Foundation. “They identified a local problem and solved it using blockchain technology. This is exactly the type of solution the Matching Fund was created to support, and we’re thrilled for Stax users to discover the speed and accessibility of assets on Stellar.”
According to Stax, it presently supports more than 100 bank and mobile wallet services in ten African nations and plans to grow. By the end of 2022, they intend to launch the non-custodial USDC wallet on the Stellar blockchain, with the aim of developing it into a multi-asset web3 wallet by the end of 2023.