Stripe announced that it will be de-coupling payments from the rest of its financial services stack. This is a big change, considering that in the past, even as Stripe grew its list of services, it required businesses to be payments customers in order to use any of the rest. Alongside this, the company is adding in a number of new embedded finance features and a new wave of AI tools. The fintech giant also announced that after a six-year hiatus, it will let customers accept cryptocurrency payments, starting with just one currency in particular, USDC stablecoins, initially only on Solana, Ethereum and Polygon. Brazil got a new fintech unicorn last week. Banking-as-a-service startup QI Tech achieved unicorn status after raising an undisclosed amount of capital in a General Atlantic-led investment that was an extension of its $200 million Series B raise, which TechCrunch covered last October. QI Tech said it is also preparing to close on the acquisition of Singulare, a Brazilian fund...
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