Stax Founders Return with $20M Fintech Venture

According to a TechCrunch exclusive, Worth, a startup that aims to make it easier for fintechs, banks, and corporations to underwrite small and medium-sized businesses, has acquired $20 million in a preliminary investment round.

It’s a big seed round, particularly since that funding is more difficult to get. However, that can be related to the founders’ past. Siblings Sal Rehmetullah and Suneera Madhani have started Stax Payments, another fintech business. After developing the firm to over $140 million in recurring income and obtaining $245 million in capital, Madhani stated they left it after over ten years, when it was valued at more than $1.1 billion. (Stax is still in business, although the two haven’t worked there in more than two years.)

They now hope to use the lessons they learned from that experience to expand Worth, a company located in Orlando, Florida, which they claim offers “frictionless” onboarding and underwriting for SMBs requesting credit-based goods, loans, or financing.

“As a customer, you may now apply for an Apple Card on your phone and use it in a coffee shop a few minutes later. It happens instantly and smoothly. However, what if your small business is seeking for a new bank account, merchant services, finance, or the same credit card? Madhani stated, “That is a different story.”

Additionally, she said that small businesses frequently have to fill out a lengthy application procedure, submit a number of papers, and wait days or even weeks for a response when they apply for financing, credit cards, loans, or any other financial service or onboarding to enterprises.

According to Worth, the new fintech start-up by the Stax Siblings founders, their system “fixes” these problems, so when SMBs apply for credit cards or loans, they deal with less paperwork, fewer application abandonments, less delays, and quicker approvals. With just three fields—name, address, and tax ID—it enables companies to prefill, enroll, and underwrite small enterprises “quickly and easily.”

According to Rehmetullah, it accomplishes this by automating all of the checks a financial institution must perform and pre-filling an application with the required data. These checks include Know Your Business (KYB) and Know Your Customer (KYC), as well as real-time financial statement analysis, ownership identification verification, fraud verification, and bank account verification. Additionally, Worth claims that it can do those checks on SMBs and company owners worldwide, not only in the US.

With the use of artificial intelligence and a strategic partnership with Equifax, Worth, which debuted its product a year ago, has analyzed vast amounts of data from bank accounts, tax filings, QuickBooks, Stripe, and other sources to create a proprietary collection of information on over 242 million SMBs worldwide. Lead investor Neil Kapur, partner of TTV Capital, which spearheaded the startup’s equity fundraising, stated that by regularly updating it, it can supply real-time data to fintechs, credit unions, payment processors, and financial institutions. TTV Capital is a venture capital firm that provides funding and support to companies that will influence global financial trends, located at Atlanta, Georgia.

Rehmetullah stated, “We have the complete 360-degree financial data of a small business, which has been nonexistent.” The startup’s founders told TechCrunch that its ARR is in the “seven figures” and that its growth is “exceeding the triple digits,” including acquiring 12 clients in the fourth quarter of 2024 alone, even if they won’t provide specific revenue statistics at this time.

Aurora Payments, REPAY Holdings, Fairwinds, and PatientFi are just a few of Worth’s more than 25 current clients. For access to pre-filling features, rapid verification services, a case management database, continuous predictive monitoring, and AI-based features, the business charges a platform fee. Additionally, there is a cost for per-entity verification.

In order to help SMBs better understand their financial health, Worth intends to introduce a business credit score, or “Worth Score,” to them directly in early 2026. At the moment, Worth employs over fifty people full-time.

The equity raise was spearheaded by TTV Capital, with participation from Florida Funders, Ingeborg, Deep Work Capital, and Florida Opportunity Fund. Worth also obtained loan financing from Silicon Valley Bank totalling $5 million. Worth intends to grow its business, especially in sales and marketing, with the help of its new funding.

According to TTV’s Kapur, Worth is automating the process of improving operational efficiency for clients, “which provides immediate and quantifiably measurable ROI.” Additionally, according to his organization, Worth’s founding team “is uniquely qualified” to address the difficulties financial institutions have with underwriting and onboarding. This he told TechCrunch, “TTV is investing in the founders as much as the idea itself.”