£1.99 a month, tap the little box on the counter: a student discount app built by three young people in Swansea
What it is A local student discount app in Swansea. Students verify with a university email, pay £1.99 a month, and tap an NFC box at partner shops to get discounts. Merchants join for free.
Why it took off Over three summer months they posted local guides and merchant announcements on TikTok every day to build a waitlist, timed the launch for freshers' week, and set up stalls at freshers' events and shopping centers. The UK shopping category chart bar is low, so a few subscriptions were enough to place it #21–39. Real scale: the team says 1,500 downloads, but only 8 ratings.
CHow you could follow it If you're in a university town nobody has touched yet and you know local shop owners, you could copy the rhythm: spend three months before term posting city guide videos, sign 50 shops for free first, then launch in the first week of term and set up at freshers' events. Don't expect it to become a big business.
- Data (updated daily) · Launched 2026-08-27 · UK rating 8 · 11-08 charted in 3 stores
iOS · best category chart rank · by store UKCanadaIrelandData 2026-10-28 → 2026-11-08 (12 days, 12 observations). Lower rank is higher; gaps mean it wasn't charted that dayiOS · Ratings count · UK Data 2026-10-28 → 2026-11-08 (12 days, 12 observations). Apple doesn't publish download counts; rating growth is a proxy for downloads.
Stavi is a student discount app for Swansea, Wales: students verify with their university email, pay £1.99 a month, and tap their phone on a small NFC box called the "Stavi Pod" at partner independent shops at the till to unlock the discount. It squeezed into the UK App Store Top Grossing shopping chart at #40, but that ranking is misleading. What's worth studying is how it used one summer to pull a city's new students and 80 local shops together.
Oct 6, student night at the mall
On the night of 2026 Oct 6, Stavi's team set up a stall at Student Night in Swansea's Quadrant shopping centre and posted a TikTok with just one line: "Come and find us… #quadrant". By Nov 6 it had 30k views, the most-viewed post on the account. The next day it posted again: "Yesterday's Stavi mini adventure… so good to see so many of you, hope you enjoyed Stavi's giveaways."
That was the last big push of freshers' season. After that most of their videos sit at seven or eight hundred views: 10-11 introducing a deli as "Walter Road's most hidden gem" (930 views), 11-02 with "girl math turned real math", three girls walking around town and totaling up "£7.12 saved", with two shops tagged as gifted (TikTok, 11-06 views).
What it is
A student discount directory covering just one city:
- Who can use it: enrolled students at Swansea's two universities (Swansea University and UWTSD), verified with a .ac.uk email and re-verified each academic year, so merchants can trust it's only for current students.
- Who pays: students pay. Stavi Pro is £1.99 a month or £19.99 a year (UK App Store page). The official FAQ says it's "cheaper than a coffee on campus" and "saves you up to £40 a month on things you already spend money on". Merchants join for free and set their own discounts.
- How redemption works: a Stavi-branded NFC device sits beside the till. A phone tapped against it opens a membership verification page the staff can check. Some shops use discount codes in the app instead.
- Coverage: bars and clubs on Wind Street and Uplands, cafés in Brynmill and Sketty, plus restaurants, bowling alleys, barbers, and gyms.
The company is Stavi Ltd, registered in the UK in December 2025, with one app. Three founders: Dan, Dawson, and Sam. Dan grew up in Swansea and studied there (Swansea Scoop, 8-18).
Why the chart ranking looks impressive
On 11-06, Stavi ranked #38 in the UK App Store Shopping Top Grossing chart. From 10-28 to 11-06 it held between #21 and #39, with a peak of #21 on 10-31. Yet in the UK it has only 8 ratings, and none of them were added in these 10 days.
The neighbors on the same chart that day were at a similar scale: 11-05 at #30 Vintly had only 2 ratings, #35 Findies had 8, and #45 WorthPoint had 2 (App Store UK, 11-05). Once you get into the top 20 of UK shopping, the bar is low, and a few dozen small subscriptions a day is enough to get in. It also briefly charted in the shopping category in Ireland and Canada, both with 0 ratings, most likely a handful of scattered subscriptions.
Its own figure is "under a month: 1,500+ downloads, 80+ local merchants" (a LinkedIn job post from around early October). Google Play shows 100+ downloads. Rough math at 1,500 downloads and 10–20% paying gives 150–300 paying users, and monthly revenue of roughly £300–600. That's my inference, not verified.
Where users come from
All local, free, and pushed by hand:
- 提前三个月在 TikTok 养候补名单。@stavi.app 从 3 月开始发,6 到 8 月几乎每天一条,内容是「新生来斯旺西必去的咖啡馆、酒吧」这类城市攻略,中间穿插「XX 店加入 Stavi」的官宣。6-17 的置顶介绍 1.18 万播放,7-13 复古游戏吧 RAVS 加入 1.78 万播放、345 次分享,7-21「Swansea students stop paying full price」1.86 万播放。到 11-06 账号 1,305 粉丝、83 条作品。
- Merchants posted for it. Partner shops announced the deal on their own Facebook and Instagram. One phone repair shop wrote, "Swansea students, you're on the VIP list." With 80 shops signed, each one was a free local traffic source.
- Local news pages. On 8-18, the Swansea local Facebook news page Swansea Scoop posted about it. The headline stressed that unlike national platforms that mostly serve big chains (Student Beans, TOTUM, UNiDAYS), this one only covers local independent shops. The post got 97 reactions and 36 comments.
- Rode freshers' season. 9-01 launched ahead of Freshers Week, 9-23 ran a stall at the Swansea University freshers' fair, and 10-06 joined a student night at the shopping centre. The Android version launched 9-26.
- Website SEO: it built a separate landing page for each merchant, targeting "Swansea student discount." The effect is impossible to see.
I saw no ads, no chart-pushing, no fake reviews. All 8 ratings are 5 stars, clustered in the first few days. Quotes: "Has so many discounts at spots I actually go to" (9-03), "Only downloaded this yesterday and already saving!" (9-04), and the latest, from 10-14: "I've saved a bloody fortune."
Who it's competing with
| Competitors | Scale (UK App Store rating) | How it differs from Stavi |
|---|---|---|
| UNiDAYS(2013) | 533k | National and free. Brands pay commission. Focused on big online brands like ASOS and Nike. |
| Student Beans(2016) | 73k | Same as above |
| TOTUM (formerly NUS Extra) | 18k | Paid student card, about £15/year, covering national chains |
| FRSHRS (Glasgow, 2026-02) | 0 | Almost the same model: a student app plus a merchant backend, single-city only, launched before Stavi |
| Student Eats Preston(2025-09) | 0 | Single-city student food and drink deals in Preston |
The big platforms ignore local independent shops, so the gap is real. But single-city versions aren't scarce: people are doing it in Glasgow and Preston, and in Swansea itself, 2019 two Swansea University students built nearly the same thing, GAIN (local indie shop discounts plus charity donations, covered by Wales247 that year). It looks like it has stopped now. The same year, Phoenix Subscriptions, also from Swansea students, sold monthly subscriptions for local discounts.
So Stavi's advantage isn't the idea, it's execution. The subscription gives it revenue. The NFC pod makes redemption quick and stops screenshot fraud, and it sits on the counter as a permanent ad. Most importantly, it posted content every day through the three summer months and visited shops one by one to sign them.
Its weak spots
- Recruiting city by city. Every new city means signing dozens of shops again, installing hardware in person, and making local content from scratch. It's already recruiting a city lead for Cardiff on LinkedIn. Whether the second city can be replicated is still unproven.
- Low ceiling. Two Swansea universities have tens of thousands of students. Even if 10% pay, that's only a few thousand pounds a month.
- Goes cold after freshers' season. From October on, video views dropped to the hundreds, and the rating hasn't moved in 10 days. Student sign-ups cluster in September each year, so the rest of the year depends on retention.
- Others have failed. Public sources don't say why GAIN stopped.
If it were you
Bottom line: you can learn a clean playbook for cold-starting a single city. But building a "student discount app for my own city" is most likely a hard, low-ceiling local business, not a product that grows big. Grade C.
Who it suits: a student or recent grad in a university town who knows local shop owners and is willing to walk the streets all summer filming videos. Or someone who already runs a local lifestyle account (city guides) and wants to give followers a product they can pay for.
Who it doesn't suit: indie devs who want to make money by writing code, buying ads, or going global. The work here is almost all offline, and the product itself is technically simple.
How to do it: pick a university town with lots of students, lots of independent shops, and no one doing it yet. Let merchants join for free and set their own discounts. Sign 50+ shops before launch. Charge students a low subscription (around £1.99). Verify with a school email and re-verify every year. For redemption, start with an in-app rotating code and skip the hardware. Add NFC stands only once you're confident people stick around, and treat them as ad space on the counter.
How to get users: copy its rhythm. Start TikTok and Instagram three months before term, post "the shops every new student in XX should hit," announce each new shop as it signs, and ask the shops to repost. Pitch the local Facebook news pages and the student union. In the first week of term, set up stalls at the freshers' fair and at shopping-centre student nights.
When to start: in the UK, students start in September. To catch 2027 freshers' season, you need to start posting and signing shops by June 2027 at the latest. Miss it and you wait another year.
What would prove me wrong: if Stavi opens Cardiff next year and lots of people in Swansea renew for a second year, the playbook is replicable by city, and I should rate it higher. If its rating is still in single digits before next September and the second city goes nowhere, it's just another GAIN.
Research notes: competitor table, acquisition evidence, full research report
- Competitors
Name Where Launched Scale How it differs from this one UNiDAYS iOS 2013 gb 533k ratings National, free, brand-funded. Targets big online brands and chains. Stavi only signs local independents and charges students a subscription. Student Beans iOS 2016 gb 73k ratings Same as UNiDAYS: skews toward big online brands and doesn't cover local independents. TOTUM (formerly NUS Extra) iOS 2018(NUS extra 2012) gb 18k ratings Paid student card, but covers national chains. Stavi only does independents in one city, with NFC redemption. FRSHRS iOS 2026-02-16 gb 0 rating Glasgow, almost the same model (student app plus merchant backend). The difference is city and execution. I found no NFC pod. GAIN iOS 2019-08 Unverified, appears stopped Same city (Swansea), same idea (independent shop discounts plus charity), built by Swansea Uni students 2019 years ago. Stavi adds a subscription and NFC redemption. Student Eats Preston / stuDex iOS 2025 0–8 ratings Other single-city student deal apps. All similarly small. Quadrant Student Night / BID app Other Yearly Local Annual events, or only covers their own merchants. Stavi works year-round across multiple areas. - Where users come from
- Verified TikTok / Instagram local content: @stavi.app has 1,305 followers, 10k likes, and 83 posts. Posting began 2026-03, with near-daily city guides and shop announcements from 6 through August. Top single posts: 18.6k / 17.8k views (TikHub 2026-11-06).
- Verified Partner merchants posting for it: Full of Graze, iRepair & Rescue, and other shops posted partnership announcements on their own FB / IG.
- Verified Local media: Swansea Scoop posted on 2026-08-18, with 97 reactions, 36 comments, and 14 shares.
- Verified Offline events / freshers' season: launched before 9-01 Freshers Week. Ran a stall at the 9-23 Swansea Uni Freshers' Fair. Went to 10-06 Quadrant Student Night, and that TikTok got 30k views.
- Inferred SEO / website: stavi.uk has a separate landing page for each merchant, targeting "Swansea student discount." Effect not verified.
- Inferred App Store search: searching "student discount" in the gb App Store ranks it #12, so the contribution is probably small.
Stavi | Student Discount (ios_6784117942) research report
Research date 2026-11-06. App Store id 6784117942. Developer Stavi Ltd (registered with Companies House 16910785,2025-12-15, address Mumbles, Swansea). The company has only this one app.
One line
A local student discount app for Swansea, UK. It verifies with .ac.uk email, charges £1.99/month (or £19.99/year) for a subscription, and lets students tap an NFC "Stavi Pod" at partner independent shops to get discounts. Its "breakout" comes from a single-city, single-freshers'-season ground campaign combined with a very low bar for the UK Shopping Top Grossing chart. It's small (self-reported 1,500+ downloads, only 8 ratings, no growth in 7 days) and doesn't count as breaking out yet.
1. How to read the data
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Launched | 2026-08-27 (iOS), 9-01 public launch. Android launched 9-26. | Data card. TikTok @stavi.app: 9-01 followers, 9-26 posts. |
| Score | gb 8 ratings, 10-28 to 11-06, not one new rating | appstore library app_day |
| UK Shopping Top Grossing chart | Ranked between #10-28 and #11-06 on 21–39. Best showing was #21 on 10-31. | appstore library chart_rank (gb, grossing, 6024) |
| Ireland / Canada Shopping Top Grossing chart | ie 24→160 (falling); ca 88–116, charted for only 3 days; both countries have 0 ratings | appstore library |
| Self-reported figures | "Under a month live, 1,500+ downloads, 80+ local merchants" | Stavi's LinkedIn company page job post (around 2026-10 early) |
| Google Play | 100+ downloads | Play Store page (app.stavi.android) |
| In-app purchases | Stavi Pro £1.99/month or £19.99/year | App Store gb page |
Why the Top Grossing ranks are inflated: on the same day (11-05), the UK Shopping Top Grossing chart had Vintly at #30 (2 ratings), Findies at #35 (8 ratings), WorthPoint at #45 (2 ratings), and List Mantis at #100 (1 ratings) (appstore database). The bar to enter the top 20 in this UK category is very low: a dozen or a few dozen small subscriptions a day can place an app at #20–40. A rough estimate from 1,500 downloads and a 10–20% paying rate (an inference, not verified) gives about 150–300 paying users and monthly revenue of roughly £300–600. Ireland and Canada charted with ratings of 0, most likely a handful of subscriptions (such as students abroad) is enough to chart in small countries.
2. Competitors
| Product | Platform | Launched | Scale | How it differs from Stavi |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| UNiDAYS | iOS / Android / web | 2013 | gb 533k ratings | Nationwide, free, paid by brand partners on commission, focused on big online brands and chains (ASOS, Nike); almost no independent local shops |
| Student Beans | iOS / Android / web | 2016 | gb 73k ratings | Same as above: free, brand-paid, skewed online |
| TOTUM (formerly NUS Extra) | iOS / Android | 2018(NUS extra 2012) | gb 18k ratings | Paid card (about £15/year), mostly national chains, with a physical card |
| FRSHRS | iOS | 2026-02-16 | gb 0 rating | Glasgow, same model: student side plus merchant backend, local venues. The closest to Stavi, but it launched earlier, so it's a parallel competitor, not a copy of Stavi |
| Student Eats Preston | iOS | 2025-09 | 0 rating | Single-city student food and drink deals in Preston |
| stuDex | iOS | 2025-08 | 8 rating | General student app, similarly tiny in scale |
| GAIN (Swansea Uni students Tom Robertson, Michael Loney) | App | 2019-08 | Unverified, appears to have stopped | Same city, same idea: Swansea independent merchant discounts, plus donations to charity (Wales247, Swansea Uni press release 2019-08-27) |
| Phoenix Subscriptions | Web | 2019-01 | Not verified | Swansea students donate to charity monthly in exchange for local merchant discounts (Wales247 2019-01-10) |
| Shopping centre / BID's own apps (e.g. Barrow Buzz), Quadrant Student Night | Offline / App | Every year | Local | Discounts issued by the business district itself, a once-a-year event, or covering only its own merchants |
| On-site student ID discounts | Offline | Has been around all along | Common | No subscription, but scattered and hard to find. Stavi sells aggregating them. |
Takeaway: this niche is not short on competitors. The big platforms don't serve independent local shops; single-city local versions already exist, and GAIN already failed in Swansea once, over 2019 years ago. What sets Stavi apart from these isn't the idea but the execution: subscription model, NFC Pod redemption, and a concentrated back-to-university push.
3. Where users came from (growth tactics)
- Local TikTok / Instagram content, pre-launched 3 months ahead (verified). TikTok @stavi.app: 1,305 followers, 10,044,83 total likes (TikHub, 2026-11-06). Posting started 2026-03, and from 6 to August it ran almost daily: "Cafes and bars every new Swansea student must visit"-style city guides, plus partner announcements like "XX joins Stavi," driving traffic to the waitlist. Top-performing posts: RAVS retro game bar joins (7-1.32M views, 1,113 likes, 345 shares), "Swansea students stop paying full price" (7-2.12M views), the 6-17 pinned intro (11.8K views), Swigg joins (8-07,7,048 views). The play: first use city content to capture incoming freshers, then publish merchant announcements as content.
- Partner merchants post about it (confirmed). Partner shops post "we've partnered with Stavi" on their own FB / IG: Full of Graze, iRepair & Rescue ("Swansea students — you're on the VIP list"), and a beauty salon (15% off first order). Each of these merchants is a local traffic source for 80 Stavi, at no cost to Stavi.
- Local media (confirmed). Swansea Scoop (a local Swansea Facebook news page) posted 2026-08-18 introducing the three founders (Dan, Dawson, Sam), specifically noting that unlike Student Beans / TOTUM / UNiDAYS, it works only with local independent merchants: 97 reactions, 36 comments, 14 shares.
- Offline events and back-to-university (confirmed). 9-01 launched just before Freshers Week; 9-23 had a stand at the Swansea University Freshers' Fair giving things away; 10-06 went to Quadrant shopping centre's Student Night, and that TikTok got 30,243 views, its most-viewed video; the USW students' union also had related reels (not investigated in detail). The launch timing landed right on the window when new students arrive and spend the most.
- SEO (partly confirmed). stavi.uk built a separate landing page for each merchant (/swansea-student-discounts/<merchant>) and packed the FAQ with the keyword "Swansea student discount." Results not verified.
- App Store search (weak). Searching "student discount" in the gb App Store, Stavi ranks #12 (iTunes Search API, 11-06), likely bringing very little traffic.
- No paid acquisition, chart-gaming, or review-prompting found. All 8 ratings are 5 stars, concentrated in the first few days (9-03, 9-04), possibly friends or first users; can't confirm. The appstore database only covers charts, with no ad data; a team this small is unlikely to run ASA ads.
4. Why it took off
- Timing: the September intake happens once a year. New students arrive in an unfamiliar city, and "where to eat, where to go, where's cheap" is their real need. The launch was timed for Freshers Week, and the waitlist was built from 6 to August.
- Home advantage: founder Dan is from Swansea and studied at the university there (Swansea Scoop). He knows Wind Street, Uplands, Brynmill and other places students go, merchants are willing to meet him, and his content has local flavour.
- Zero-cost merchant onboarding: merchants list for free and set their own discounts (LinkedIn company page, stavi.uk/contact), so 80+ merchants were signed in one summer. The more merchants, the more students see value, and merchants promote it for free.
- Cheap price: £1.99/month, "cheaper than a coffee on campus," claiming savings of £40 a month (FAQ). Reviews say "saved a bloody fortune" and "spots I actually go to"; what resonates is "places I already go."
- The chart effect is an illusion: the UK Shopping Top Grossing ranks #21–39 need only a few subscriptions (comparable apps have just 2–8 ratings), which says nothing about scale.
5. Differentiation
- Only local independent merchants, completely apart from UNiDAYS / Student Beans' "big online brands." It repeats this line in every piece of promotion, and local media use it as a headline.
- Students pay a subscription, merchants are free. Big platforms have brands pay and students get free access; Stavi flips it: fill supply with "zero-barrier merchants" first, then charge students £1.99 a month.
- NFC Pod redemption: a branded NFC device sits at the till, and a phone tap brings up the verification page. It makes redemption smooth and blocks screenshot fraud, and the Pod on the counter is itself offline advertising. The cost is installing hardware in person in every city.
- Student status re-verified every year, so merchants can feel confident they're serving only current students.
Among these differentiators, what actually got it going is point 1 (local focus, which students and merchants both understand) combined with on-the-ground execution during back-to-university. The NFC Pod and subscription model mainly determine whether it makes money and retains users; they aren't the reason it attracts new users. The same idea was run by GAIN 2019 years ago in the same city, so the idea itself is not scarce; what's scarce is the execution: posting content every day through three summer months and signing merchants door by door.
6. How many people have seen it
- Still barely known. Only one local FB news page, Swansea Scoop, has written about it; x-radar finds no related tweets; there's no TrustMRR listing and no founder revenue posts; the LinkedIn company page has 71 followers.
- Copycats: none seen so far. FRSHRS (Glasgow) and Student Eats Preston are parallel similar products, both launched earlier than Stavi.
7. Takeaways
- The single-city, back-to-university, on-the-ground playbook: for 3 months over the summer, post city-guide short videos daily to build the waitlist; publish "new merchant joins" as content; ask merchants to share; launch on the first day of term; then set up stands at freshers' fairs and shopping-centre events.
- Pricing flipped on both sides: merchants pay nothing, in exchange for supply density; demand-side users pay a low subscription fee.
- Offline redemption props (NFC stickers / stands) double as ad placements.
- Reading the charts: in niche categories like UK and Ireland Shopping, the Top Grossing ranks #20–40 need almost no revenue. When you see a small app on such a chart, first check the rating counts of other apps in the same range.
8. Still unclear
- The 1,500+ downloads figure is self-reported and unverified; paid conversion and retention are unknown. Ratings showed zero growth for 7 days after the back-to-university peak, so new installs may have slowed since October.
- A second city, Cardiff, is recruiting for a pilot (LinkedIn); whether it can be replicated is unknown. Every city requires re-signing merchants and installing Pods, which is not cheap.
- Why GAIN failed 2019 years ago (scale, model, graduates splitting up) was not found, but it matters a lot for judging how long Stavi can last.
- Where the Ireland and Canada subscriptions came from is unclear.
Sources
- App Store gb page: apps.apple.com/gb/app/stavi-student-discount/id6784117942
- Website / FAQ: www.stavi.uk/, www.stavi.uk/faqs
- LinkedIn company page (1,500+ downloads, 80+ merchants, Cardiff hiring): uk.linkedin.com/company/stavi-app
- Swansea Scoop 2026-08-18:www.facebook.com/swanseascoop/posts/122202502850389014/
- TikTok @stavi.app (scraped via TikHub API, 2026-11-06)
- FRSHRS:www.instagram.com/p/DeBoj91jL0J/ ;App Store id6755318596
- GAIN 2019: www.wales247.co.uk/new-discount-app-to-help-revitalise-swans…; Swansea Uni press release 2019-08-27
- Phoenix Subscriptions 2019:www.wales247.co.uk/a-student-is-launching-a-new-fundraising-…
- Companies House:STAVI LTD 16910785
- appstore database (agent-im server, app_day / chart_rank, 2026-10-28 to 11-06)