Illuminate Financial is proud to participate in Karta's $15 million Series A alongside Galaxy Digital and existing backers Canary and Clocktower Ventures. Here's why we believe Karta is on track to become the definitive dollar card for the global HNW market.

A multi billion gap hiding in plainsight

Every time a wealthy Brazilian swipes their domestic card abroad, they hand somewhere between 2% and 11% of the transaction to their bank in FX spreads, IOF taxes, and issuer fees. On a $20,000 spend,that can mean paying over $2,000 more than the sticker price, simply because they don’t have access to the right card. While the Brazilian example is particularly egregious, internal individuals are being ripped off on FX globally and they do not have access to dollar based cards because they are thin/no file individuals when it comes to the US credit bureaus.

For years, American Express's International Dollar Card (IDC) served this need. It was the product that high-net-worth clients globally relied on to spend seamlessly in dollars abroad. Then Amex pulled out of the market, leaving behind a 11-figure transaction volume hole in the market with no meaningful replacement.

Karta was built to fill and then surpassthe gap left by AMEX IDC.

What Karta is building

Karta’s card is the combination of three of my favorite investment themes: Wealthtech, Stablecoins payments, and application layer AI.

Karta is a premium US-issued Visa Infinite credit card, designed specifically for international HNW clients with assets held in the US. This stablecoin card uses its wedge of zero FX spread, no international transaction fees, and credit lines of up to $200,000 to get their customers attention, but their AI concierge is what gets them telling all of their friends about it. Their 24/7AI-powered WhatsApp concierge service gets back to their customers within minutes in their native language and has agentic commerce capabilities on the back end doing everything from disputes, bookings, travel, claims and buying gifts. This is better than traditional white glove service with the scalability of software.

Offered through 70+ banks and brokerages, Karta is a card offering that financial advisors can finally use as a differentiator and wedge rather than what historically has been a liability for them.

Why now

Three macro shifts have converged to makethis moment uniquely right for Karta.

The Genius Act and the rise of stablecoins have created an explosion in crossborder infrastructure for stablecoin-settled payment products to operate at scale.The settlement architecture that Karta runs on blending fiat and stablecoin rails would have been materially harder to build and operate even two years ago.

The Amex IDC exit created a hard vacuum in the market. Unlike gradual incumbent decline, this was an abrupt departure that left a large, identified, high-value customer segment without a product. That cohort is sitting inside Karta's existing partner institutions right now, waiting to be converted. XP, for example, has less than 10% of their eligible client base on Karta today.

The private bank distribution model is astructural unlock. Most challenger card companies spend heavily on consumer acquisition and compete in a race-to-zero on fees. Karta inverts this entirely: they win institutional RFPs, the partner refers their clients, and Karta extends credit against assets already held in custody. The result is a CAC that is a fraction of direct-to-consumer alternatives, and a customer base with credit risk so low as to make any lender jealous.

The traction speaks for itself

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According to on-chain data at Paymentscan, Karta’s volumes have increased exponentially since they launched their partnerships channel last year. Just this year volumes increased ~5x as of the last full month of volumes, May. This traction is a testament to the partnerships GTM and the love of the product by their HNW/UHNW customers. With their new $125m warehouse from CIM, Karta now has the fire power to scale to their hearts desire.

This of course is just the start as Karta has room to expand to billions of dollars of volume based off the gap left by Amex IDC and having built a loyal following in the most valuable customer base in the world of HNW/UHNW the product expansion ideas are endless.

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This is the team to back

First, the co-founders. Freddy Juez and Orlando Espinoza are serial co-founders with strong complementary skills sets. They are two of the scrappiest founders I’ve had the pleasure to meet, which they use to get in the room with senior bank leadership and win deals away from significantly more funded competitors. Freddy’s ability to identify and hire tier 1 talent is a compounding advantage, which leads to…

Fernando Dalceggio, Karta’s Head of Commercial. Fernando is Karta’s not so secret weapon. As the former head of new BD for Amex IDC Latam, he was tasked with closing five institutional partnerships in year one. At just above a year now in the role, he has brought on 70+ private banks and brokerages. Bringing Fernando’s decades long relationships to the table, Karta walks through doors of private banks like an enterprise rather than a start up.