Stripe’s Big Changes, Brazil’s Newest Fintech Unicorn, and the Story of a Startup’s Closure

Fundid founder shares how rising rates of interest, enterprise capital funds and partners killed the business finance startup

Welcomego to TechCrunch Fintech! This week, we’ll take a have a look at Stripe’s necessary product announcements, the Brazilian fintech startup’s valuation increase, and more!

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Big story

Stripe announced that it’s going to separate payments from the rest of its financial services suite. This is a big change considering that in the past, Stripe, whilst it expanded its list of services, required businesses to be payment customers in an effort to use its remaining services. In addition, the company is adding a number of latest built-in financial features and a latest wave of AI tools. The fintech giant also announced that after a six-year hiatus, it’s going to allow customers to just accept cryptocurrency payments, starting with only one specific currency, USDC stablecoins, and initially only on Solana, Ethereum and Polygon.

Weekly evaluation

Last week, Brazil gained a latest fintech unicorn. A banking-as-a-service startup QI Tech has achieved unicorn status after raising undisclosed capital in an investment led by General Atlantic, which followed a $200 million Series B raise that TechCrunch funded last October. QI Tech said it is usually preparing to finish the acquisition of Singulare, a Brazilian fund management services provider, in the third quarter. Meanwhile, one other Brazilian startup, Vixtra, secured $36 million in debt and equity financing — one other example of firms in the region continuing to draw enterprise dollars.

Dollars and cents

Hit, a platform that helps creators manage and grow their businesses, announced a $3 million seed round with investment from ImpactX, Capitalize and Serac Ventures. Bump allows creators to trace income and market value, which may also help them negotiate higher deals and see how much money their partners owe them.

Y Combinator graduate and B2B fintech startup Fintoc raised a $7 million Series A financing round to consolidate its presence in its home country of Chile and in Mexico, where it expanded its operations a yr ago.

GrapefruitA 2022 Philippines-based startup — allowing U.S. residents to send money to the country while constructing credit — has raised $35 million in a Series A round led by Dubai-based enterprise capital firm Vy Capital with participation from Founders Fund.

You can hear the Equity team speak about this deal and more here:

What else will we write?

Headquarters Bengaluru CHALKThe $6.4 billion company has received approval in principle for a payments aggregator license, a boost that might help the Indian fintech startup higher serve customers and bring latest products and ideas to market faster.

The end of a startup could be bittersweet for founders. In case of To throwrising rates of interest killed the business finance startup. But VCs and partners are hurting it too, argues founder Stefanie Sample in a fascinating read by Christine Hall.

After a turbulent yr, a banking-as-a-service (BaaS) startup. Synapse filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and his assets will probably be taken over by TabaPay.

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