The founding father of Fundid tells how rising rates of interest, VCs and partners destroyed the business finance startup
WhichWelcome to TechCrunch Fintech! This week we take a take a look at Stripe’s big product announcements, a valuation surge for a Brazilian fintech startup, and more!
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The big story
stripes announced it will decouple payments from the remaining of its financial services portfolio. That’s a giant change considering that despite Stripe expanding its list of services, previously it required corporations to be payment customers with a view to use the remaining. Additionally, the corporate is adding a variety of recent embedded finance features and a brand new wave of AI tools. The fintech giant also announced that after a six-year hiatus, it’s going to allow its customers to just accept cryptocurrency payments, initially only with a particular currency, the USDC stablecoins, initially only on Solana, Ethereum and Polygon.
Analysis of the week
Brazil got a brand new fintech unicorn last week. Banking-as-a-Service startup QI Tech Achieved unicorn status after raising an undisclosed amount of capital in an investment led by General Atlantic, which was an extension of the $200 million Series B raise reported by TechCrunch last October. QI Tech said it’s also preparing to finish its acquisition of Singulare, a Brazilian fund management services provider, within the third quarter. Meanwhile, one other Brazilian startup, Vixtra, secured $36 million in debt and equity financing – one other example of corporations within the region continuing to draw enterprise capital.
Dollars and cents
Bump, a platform that helps creators manage and grow their businesses, announced a $3 million seed round with investments from ImpactX, Capitalize and Serac Ventures. Bump allows creators to trace income and market value, which will help them negotiate higher deals and see how much money partners owe them.
Y Combinator graduate and B2B fintech startup Fintoc The company has closed a $7 million Series A funding round to solidify its presence in its home country of Chile and in Mexico, where it expanded a 12 months ago.
PomeloA startup founded within the Philippines in 2022 that permits people within the United States to send money to the country while constructing their credit rating has raised $35 in a Series A round led by Dubai enterprise capital firm Vy Capital Millions of US dollars collected from the founders’ fund.
You can hear the Equity crew speak about this deal and more here:
What else we write
Headquarters in Bengaluru CREDvalued at $6.4 billion, has received in-principle approval for a payments aggregator license to offer the Indian fintech startup a lift that might help it higher serve its customers, bringing latest products to market bring and experiment with ideas more quickly.
The dissolution of a startup could be bittersweet for founders. In the case of Pour, rising rates of interest killed the business finance startup. But VCs and partners are hurting it too, says founder Stefanie Sample on this compelling read by Christine Hall.
After a turbulent 12 months, Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) startup Synapse has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and its assets are being acquired by TabaPay.
Very interesting headlines
401Go raises $12 million in Series A to fuel next phase of growth
Some VCs warn that Ramp vs. Brex risks becoming a fintech company, Uber vs. Lyft
