Plain answers about how the money moves, what the customer sees, what happens in a dispute, and where the funds actually sit.
Getting paid
Getting paid
The bit that matters most. How the money actually moves from your customer to your bank account.
What is milestone escrow, in plain English?
Your customer parks the money for each stage of the job into a neutral, licensed account before you pick up a tool. When you finish that stage and they sign it off, the money for that stage hits your bank. No invoice chasing, no 30-day terms, no hoping they're good for it.
How fast do I actually get paid?
When the customer approves a milestone (or the review window expires without a complaint), funds land in your account within 48 hours. That's it. No net-30, no excuses, no "the cheque's in the mail".
What if my customer disappears mid-job?
The money for the milestones they've already funded is already in the trust account — they can't claw it back. If they go silent, the dispute timer kicks in and you upload your evidence. If they don't respond inside the review window, the funds release to you automatically.
Do I pay the 1.6% fee, or does the customer?
The 1.6% escrow fee comes out of the milestone amount when it's released to you — so technically it's the tradie. But because card surcharges in Australia are capped under the RBA rules and our flat 1.6% covers card, bank transfer and PayTo, most tradies just price it into the quote. There's no escrow fee on jobs under $30k.
Do I still need to send invoices?
You can if your accountant wants one for the books, and Stagex generates a tax invoice for every released milestone automatically. But you don't need to send a chase-up invoice to get paid — the milestone sign-off IS the payment trigger.
Customer experience
What the customer sees
Tradies worry escrow will spook the customer. It doesn't — it does the opposite. Here's what they actually see.
Will the customer feel like they have control?
Yes — and that's the point. They can see every milestone, every photo, every sign-off in their portal. They approve releases one stage at a time. For a homeowner spending $80k on a renovation, that's a lot more comfort than handing over a 30% deposit and crossing their fingers.
What do they see in their portal?
A live view of the job: which milestones are funded, which are in progress, which are awaiting their sign-off, and how much is held in trust. Photos and notes you upload show up against the right milestone. They can also raise a dispute from there if something's wrong.
Can they pay by card, bank transfer, or PayTo?
All three. Card (Visa/Mastercard/Amex) via Stripe, bank transfer (PayID/BSB), and PayTo for recurring milestone deposits. The 1.6% all-in fee is the same regardless of method — we don't surcharge cards differently.
What if they don't want to use escrow?
Then the job runs the old way — you invoice, they pay, you hope. Stagex doesn't force escrow on anyone. But in our experience, once a customer hears "your deposit sits in a licensed trust account, not in my bank", they're more comfortable, not less.
Disputes & evidence
When things go sideways
Most jobs don't have disputes. But when one does, the difference between getting paid and writing it off is whether you've got a clean trail.
What counts as "done" for a milestone?
Whatever you and the customer agreed on when you set the milestone up. Stagex prompts you to write the completion criteria into the quote — things like "slab poured and cured", "electrical rough-in passed inspection", "final coat applied". Vague milestones cause disputes, so be specific.
What if the customer disputes my work?
You both get 10 business days to upload evidence — photos, sign-off forms, inspection certificates, messages, whatever you've got. No open-ended back-and-forth. The funds stay frozen in trust until it's resolved — they're not refunded to the customer, and they're not released to you.
Who decides who's right?
Stagex runs a structured mediation in the first instance. If it can't be resolved there, the customer or the tradie can escalate the escrow complaint to AFCA — the Australian Financial Complaints Authority — because the trustee holding the money (Zai Pty Ltd, AFSL 461841) is regulated under that scheme.
Can I use evidence in court if it comes to that?
Yes. Every event on a Stagex job — milestone setup, photos, sign-offs, messages, payments — is timestamped and stored in a tamper-evident hash chain. You can export a court-admissible PDF of the whole job history at any time. Solicitors love it because it saves them a week of reconstructing the timeline.
Money safety
Where the money sits
The single biggest question on an escrow product. Short answer: not in Stagex's bank. Here's the detail.
Where is my customer's money held?
In a segregated trust account run by Zai Pty Ltd (operating as Assembly Payments), a licensed Australian trustee. The account sits at a Tier-1 Australian bank. The money never enters Stagex's bank account and we have no ability to withdraw it.
What happens if Stagex goes broke?
Your customer's funds are in the trustee's account, not ours. A Stagex insolvency doesn't touch them — the trustee returns open milestone balances to the customers who funded them, under their AFSL obligations. The trustee's licence, not Stagex's, is what protects the money.
Is the trustee regulated?
Yes. Zai Pty Ltd holds AFSL 461841 — an Australian Financial Services Licence issued and supervised by ASIC. They're also subject to AFCA as the external dispute resolution scheme for any escrow-related complaint.
Is the platform PCI-compliant?
Card payments are processed by Stripe, which is PCI DSS Level 1 certified — the highest tier. Stagex itself never sees or stores your customer's full card number; we only ever see the last four digits and a tokenised reference. Data is hosted in Supabase's Sydney region, encrypted with AES-256 at rest and TLS 1.3 in transit.
Still got a question?
If your question isn't here, the trust & security page goes deeper on the money side. Or just talk to the team — a real human will get back to you.