Weekly Fintech & Crypto Analysis: Telegram's billions, Robinhood & N26 & Stash raises, RBS failures, and Chinese tech moves

Hi Fintech Architects --

Welcome back to the subscribers-only letter! Here are the top updates hitting our radar — $500 million just plopped into B2C fintech.

1. Robinhood raises $280m at $8.3bn valuation (link here) and Challenger bank N26 raises additional €92 million for its Series D funding (link here) and Investing and banking app Stash raises $112m (link here)

2. RBS abandons Monzo-challenger Bó (link here) and here’s why RBS killed digital bank Bo only five months after launch (link here)

3. Shopify launches Shop, a new mobile app (link here)

4. Plaid Payment Initiation in the UK (link here)

5. Fintech Taulia Officially Announces Partnership with JPMorgan to Provide Trade Finance Solution (link here)

6. Oriente raises $50 million to continue building its infrastructure for digital financial services (link here)

7. Tencent Becomes ‘Substantial’ Investor In Afterpay (link here)

8. Nasdaq Is Using R3’s Corda for Managing Digital Assets (link here)

9. Binance widget now available to all Brave desktop browser users, …