When American Express began scaling back a niche credit card for non‑U.S. clients who keep money in American banks and brokerages, it left institutions scrambling to find a replacement for some of their most demanding customers. Now, a startup is trying to plug that gap with a WhatsApp‑run premium card that lets international travelers turn those assets into spending power.
Miami-based Karta, founded by serial entrepreneurs Freddy Juez and Orlando Espinoza, announced on Wednesday that it has raised a $15 million Series A round led by Galaxy Ventures, with new investor Illuminate and existing backers Canary and Clocktower Ventures also participating. It also announced a $125 million debt facility provided by CIM, an investment firm specializing in credit facilities.
The way it works is straightforward. A client living outside the U.S. but keeping money in an American bank or brokerage applies through a partner institution and can be approved in minutes, without needing a Social Security number or Individual Taxpayer Identification Number. Once approved, they receive a Karta card issued from the U.S. with a credit line of up to $200,000.
The client can use a virtual card immediately, with a physical Visa card arriving later, and most activity—alerts, disputes, and concierge requests—goes through a 24/7 WhatsApp chat. The card carries the typical perks of a premium Visa, including no foreign exchange fees, reward points, and access to select invite‑only events.
“When you think about all of the startup use cases that exist, most of them—if not all— are debit cards. No one is able to figure out credit cards, unsecured, at scale, [on] a worldwide basis,” Juez told Fortune. “Then we thought about the idea of Karta.”
Filling a niche
American Express long dominated this market niche with its International Dollar Card program, which let non-U.S. clients who held assets in American banks spend dollars while travelling. As AmEx began phasing out parts of that dollar-card offering, private banks and wealth managers that had relied on it started looking for alternatives for their globally mobile clients.
According to Juez, that is when they started coming to him to fill that market need. Karta had expected to bring on only a small number of institutions in its early years, he said, but interest quickly surpassed those projections as firms looked for a new dollar card to offer their top travelers.
Today, the company works with roughly 85 private banks and wealth managers, which offer the Karta card to their clients as a way to preserve access to the U.S.‑dollar product after AmEx’s pullback. Banking partners include Itaú, Raymond James, and XP International US, among other institutions.
