Paidax — a social platform for investments

Beksultanokha Anuarov, city — Almaty, CEO of Paidax, @paidax.kz

How It All Began

I am the CEO of the FinTech startup Paidax, which creates an investment platform with social features, providing access to US stocks. Before founding Paidax, I actively invested not only in the stock market but also in alternative assets such as real estate, cryptocurrencies, and private companies. My team and I have always been interested in the possibility of democratizing investments—making them accessible to everyone, regardless of their capital or level of financial literacy. The idea for the startup arose from a desire to change investment culture and offer a solution where anyone can become an investor and communicate with experienced investors.

We were lucky because from the very beginning, we had support from angel investors with rich experience in the financial and banking sectors. We spent a year and a half obtaining a brokerage license and developed more than 10 systems for automating broker processes. We focused on creating an application that emphasizes social interaction. Users can follow popular investors, view their portfolios, and learn from their experience, which significantly simplifies the process of starting to invest.

Target Audience

At Paidax, we bring together novice and experienced investors through the social features of the platform. You can start investing with just $1, and there is no brokerage commission for trades up to $100 per month. Inside the application, we have developed financial literacy courses that help novice investors understand the basics of investing and confidently begin their journey in the world of finance.

Additionally, thanks to the Best Execution and Smart Order Routing technologies from ITS, our users gain access to the entire depth of liquidity of foreign securities available on the NASDAQ and NYSE exchanges.

Incubation Programs

We are graduates of the RS Bootcamp acceleration program and the USAID project for entrepreneurship development, as well as the IRA program from Most Venture. Moreover, we are members of Astana Hub and the MFSA, which allows us to benefit from tax incentives and participate in various startup support programs.

In addition to the founders' own funds, we managed to raise $600,000 from business angels, the financial literacy academy Investudy, and the Most Investors Club syndicate.

We also received support from Google, which allocated $112,000 in grants for the use of Google Cloud infrastructure.

Challenges

One of the main challenges we continue to face is the issue of user trust. People are often cautious about new investment platforms, and we constantly need to prove that we are safe and reliable.

We are considered a licensed broker by the MFSA and have obtained membership on the ITS exchange. Our IT system has passed security certification from the exchange and received approval from the regulator.

As CEO, I view challenges as an integral part of business processes. The main thing is not to give up and work for the long term. It is important to believe in the idea, be ready to learn from mistakes, and quickly adapt to changes.

Achievements

We are proud to have become a member of ITS and to have received the necessary licenses from the AFSA to operate in the market. We have successfully launched the application, which is already used by thousands of users.

Of course, one of our main achievements was creating a stellar team that shares our vision.

We value creativity and innovation, which allows us to quickly adapt to market changes and find new solutions. Synergy between different competencies within the team helps develop a user-oriented product and achieve high results.

Plans

We are grateful to our users and investors for their trust and support of the project. We plan to direct investments towards the development of new investment tools and improving the user experience.

An important part of our strategy remains the development of the mobile application and scaling into the Central Asian and MENA region markets.

Our goal is to make investing accessible and convenient for everyone.