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Here's exactly how Stagex handles your customer's money — and what happens if we get hit by a bus.
Stagex collects each milestone payment upfront through Stripe and holds it securely until the work is signed off — it is not passed to your customer, and it is not released to the tradie early.
Who holds it
Stagex
Stagex holds every milestone deposit in its payment account until the milestone is signed off.
Payment processing
Stripe
Card and bank payments are collected and processed through Stripe's certified payment infrastructure.
Release trigger
Milestone sign-off
Funds move only once a milestone is approved — never before, and never automatically.
Your customer pays upfront. Stagex holds that money and releases it to the tradie only when a milestone approval is signed by both the customer and the tradie — and that instruction is logged with a timestamp. We are not currently structured behind a separate, licensed third-party trustee, so we don't describe this as a regulated trust account — see below for what that means if Stagex itself runs into trouble.
We don't currently hold customer funds through a separate, licensed third-party trustee. That means open milestone funds are not legally ring-fenced from Stagex the way a regulated trust account would be — we'd rather tell you that plainly than imply a protection that isn't in place yet.
Milestones are designed to be short and specific so money doesn't sit idle for long, and we don't hold funds any longer than the job requires.
Every organisation can export a court-admissible evidence packet (PDF) covering its full milestone, payment, and dispute history. Available at any time, not just at shutdown.
Customer data is stored in Supabase's ap-southeast-2 (Sydney) region. Data never leaves Australia — including backups.
AES-256 encryption at rest and TLS 1.3 in transit. Webhook payloads are HMAC-signed and validated with constant-time comparison to block timing attacks.
Every customer-facing table enforces row-level security scoped to the organisation. You can't read another org's rows — not even in error.
We're working through SOC 2 Type II audit readiness with a target of 2027. We'll publish the report here when it's done. We don't claim certifications we don't have.
When either side raises a dispute, both parties have a defined window to upload evidence and respond. No open-ended back-and-forth.
Every event in a dispute is logged in a SHA-256 hash chain — each row signs the one before it, so any later edit breaks the chain and is detectable.
Mediation runs to the 10-business-day window above. If it can't be resolved there, both parties keep their normal legal options — Stagex isn't a substitute for those.
Stagex generates the timestamped payment trail your accountant, solicitor, or insurer needs — without you having to rebuild it from a spreadsheet.
Victoria
Security of Payment Act 2026
Milestone records line up with statutory progress payment requirements. Every release is timestamped and signed by both parties.
Queensland
BIF Act
Per-job milestone ledgers are available on demand, in the shape BIF Act record-keeping expects. This is record-keeping support, not a claim of statutory trust-account segregation.
New South Wales
Fair Trading retention rules
Per-milestone retention amounts are tracked and surfaced when each retention period elapses. No more lost retention.
NSW — iCare HBCF
Home Building Compensation Fund readiness
Per-job evidence packets (milestones, sign-offs, payment events) are exportable in the shape iCare claims work expects.
Australia-wide
Privacy Act 1988 + APP 1-13
Full compliance with the Australian Privacy Principles. Data hosted in AU. See our Privacy Policy for the long version.
Read our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service for the full detail, or talk to the team if you've got a question we haven't answered.