Why We Invested in Kulipa

The stablecoin ecosystem is in the midst of a necessary transition, officially evolving from a speculative trading asset to a financial vehicle with real-world utility. Stablecoin issuance doubled between early 2024 and late 2025. Stablecoins now process more than $9 trillion in transaction volume per month. Meanwhile, regulatory regimes across the United States (GENIUS Act), Europe (MiCA), the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Japan are reducing uncertainty and encouraging institutional adoption. 

Taken together, we see the beginnings of the emergence of a hybrid financial world, where stablecoins operate alongside traditional networks rather than replace them. This is playing out in real time as networks, processors, and fintechs integrate stablecoins into existing payment flows. 

Yet stablecoins still represent only a single digit percentage of global payment flows. They remain difficult to use in conjunction with the fiat economy. Most consumers still cannot use onchain dollars directly at merchants. Wallets and fintechs generally lack the licensing, compliance infrastructure, and issuing capabilities needed to bridge this gap. The bottleneck slows stablecoin adoption and limits the broader transition toward an onchain financial system.

Unlocking the next phase of adoption requires infrastructure that connects onchain balances to fiat acceptance rails and makes stablecoins usable at everyday points of sale. Without this layer, stablecoins will remain primarily a store-of-value and cross-border settlement tool rather than a mainstream payment instrument.

Kulipa offers a solution. The Paris-based company is building a stablecoin-native issuing infrastructure that enables real-world spending, combining capital efficiency, seamless compliance, and global scalability. Kulipa, founded in 2023, provides the bridge that allows wallets and fintechs to issue globally accepted card products funded directly by onchain balances. It supports both custodial and self-custodial wallets, enabling stablecoins to be spent directly without the need for pre-funded accounts.

We see the massive potential in this vision. That’s why we’re glad to co-lead Kulipa’s $6.2 million seed round alongside 1kx with participation from Fabric Ventures and White Star Capital. Kulipa is so much more than a stablecoin card company. Its solutions are desperately needed for the next phase of stablecoin integration into the real-world economy.

Bridging the Gap

While working at Mastercard and French unicorn, Spendesk, Axel Cateland came to a realization: bridging the gap between the crypto and fiat worlds would create immense value. A friend introduced Cateland to longtime Google and Meta engineer Michael Shynar. The duo spent hours on Zoom hashing out the idea for Kulipa. “We believed from the beginning that blockchain was the future of finance,” Co-founder and CEO Cateland says of those early conversations with his Co-founder and CTO.

Kulipa was born from the idea that developing a compliance- and licensing-first infrastructure would enable the most robust scalable platform. Since launching its card infrastructure in 2025, the team has issued more than 120,000 cards and signed 20 customers, including Flutterwave, Solflare, nSave, and Ready. “Kulipa has enabled Ready to become an onchain alternative to banks,” Itamar Lesuisse, CEO of Ready, says. “With their infrastructure, we can issue globally accepted cards directly from stablecoin balances, giving our users seamless access to everyday spending in a compliant and scalable way.” 

These early partners validated the product’s real-world demand across both crypto-native and emerging-market use cases, with 70% month-over-month transaction volume growth. Integrations with wallet providers such as Privy are expanding distribution opportunities. 

Kulipa’s traction reflects the broader market inflection: stablecoin activity continues to migrate everyday financial utility, with card issuance emerging as the primary conduit between onchain balances and real-world spend.

A One-stop Shop for Card Issuance and Beyond

Kulipa eliminates the need for wallets and fintechs to secure licenses, build issuer-processing systems, manage scheme relationships, or run complex settlement and off-ramp flows. The company provides a single platform that abstracts the full complexity of launching stablecoin-powered card issuing payment products. Cards issued through Kulipa can be used anywhere major card networks are accepted, including for retail payments and ATM withdrawals.

Through one API, wallets and fintechs can do it all: access multi-region card issuance, scheme connectivity, KYC/KYB, fraud and KYT screening, 3DS, settlement plugins, and real-time authorization against onchain balances.

The upshot: Customers launch globally in weeks, preserve self-custody, and keep full UX control.

Kulipa operates a local-first issuing model with regulated coverage across the European Union, Argentina, and Nigeria, with U.S. expansion underway through BIN sponsorship. “From day one, we’ve focused on being as local as possible by understanding local regulations, coverage issues, and licenses,” Cateland says. “We’re building to worldwide coverage while understanding country- and region-level variations.”

Kulipa’s effectiveness comes from combining three distinct layers into one overarching platform. 

At the regulatory layer, Kulipa partners with licensed financial institutions to provide the regulated perimeter for card issuance and more. To solve issue processing needs, Kulipa works with multiple providers to reduce latency and scale regionally. Finally, Kulipa Core works at the crypto-to-fiat bridging layer, allowing self-custodial wallets to function like debit accounts.

“We’ve designed a white-label solution that allows for a quick integration, with customization options to make each card issuance unique to their consumer base,” Kulipa CTO and Co-Founder, Michael Shynar, says.

The Wider World Awaits

With the funding, Kulipa will advance its mission to make stablecoin-based spending as seamless and globally accepted as traditional card payments. The goal is enabling fintech platforms to operate as fully integrated, onchain-enabled financial institutions.

Kulipa will use the funding to grow its engineering team and accelerate its go-to-market through key hires while also leveraging AI to remain lean from an operations perspective. The company will also invest in regulatory licenses worldwide to strengthen its advantage as the only platform offering a global issuing layer with local compliance established in each region.

We’re excited to begin this journey with Axel, Michael, and the rest of the Kulipa team. We can’t wait to see how they help build an infrastructure that enables stablecoins to reach their potential.