In a crypto card sector growing 230% year-over-year, why did stablecoin card issuer Kulipa shut down due to insolvency?

By angelilu, Foresight News

A stablecoin card infrastructure company that had raised $9.2 million in funding, claimed to have issued over 120,000 cards, and signed up 20 clients collapsed just about seven months after its latest funding round. On July 29, Paris-based Kulipa abruptly ceased operations due to solvency issues (insolvency), instantly disabling all of its cards and directly impacting approximately 20 wallet and fintech clients—including Solflare, Ready, Flutterwave, and nSave. Its website is now inaccessible.

The team also appeared highly impressive: CEO Axel Cateland came from MasterCard and Spendesk; CTO Michael Shynar spent eight years at Google as a Staff Engineer and led the commercialization platform for WhatsApp; compliance head Benoit previously built compliance frameworks for Nickel, Lemonway, and Binance France. Kulipa’s funding wasn’t insignificant either—it raised a total of approximately $9.2 million across two rounds, including a $6.2 million seed round led by Flourish Ventures and 1kx, with participation from White Star Capital and Fabric Ventures, which closed in December 2025 and was disclosed in April this year.

Why did that team with such strong backing collapse in such a short time? Were any clients’ assets affected?

Kulipa told its clients the issue was 'solvency-related,' without issuing any detailed statement explaining how it became insolvent. Reports indicate the team attempted to find a buyer and explore options to continue operations before shutting down, but these efforts were unsuccessful.

Corroborating this, shortly after announcing a funding round in April, Kulipa’s official Twitter account went largely silent, with its last tweet posted on April 28—suddenly shutting down months later, which in hindsight appears to have been a signal of internal stress.

Ironically, just about three months before its shutdown, a16z crypto’s April stablecoin infrastructure landscape report still listed Kulipa as one of the card-issuing service providers worth watching—and Kulipa proudly reposted it.

In one sentence: Kulipa failed not due to lack of demand or product flaws, but because it lacked sufficient capital in a license-intensive, low-margin infrastructure layer—and couldn’t scale or secure funding fast enough to outpace its cash burn.

Among Kulipa’s 20 clients, there are broadly two types.

The first type is self-custodial wallets:

A Ready co-founder explicitly stated that Kulipa abruptly ceased operations without giving Ready any prior notice; they were forced to urgently shut down their card services only after cards stopped working. Solflare faced a similar situation—cards were disabled first, and users found out afterward.

The second category consists of custodial fintech firms: Flutterwave (an African cross-border payments giant whose card business focuses on Nigeria and Africa) and nSave (a savings platform targeting emerging markets). These are not self-custodial wallets but rather cross-border payment and savings products whose business models typically involve holding user balances. Kulipa’s official documentation clearly states that it supports both 'pre-funded deployment' and 'native wallet integration' modes—meaning some clients indeed used the pre-funded approach: users first deposited money into accounts托管 by the card issuer for later use.

Custodial client nSave also spoke out on X. According to team member Abdallah, nSave had already been affected nearly a month earlier: they learned about Kulipa’s issues on a Saturday morning, immediately negotiated with Kulipa to delay shutdown by a few days, and notified all users by Monday to 'spend the funds on their cards or switch to another card within five days.' No user experienced unexpected payment rejections, and no one suffered losses. Moreover, they had already been preparing alternative solutions before the collapse. He bluntly stated that letting users discover the issuer’s shutdown only after their cards stop working 'is a matter of competence,' and criticized peers: 'Don’t hide behind self-custody as an excuse—what you should do is build redundancy and give advance notice, not blame emotions after harming users.'

As of publication, only three companies—Solflare, Ready, and nSave—have issued clear public statements on the matter. Among Kulipa’s claimed ~20 clients, Flutterwave and other unnamed clients have yet to publicly disclose details about their users’ funds or handling procedures.The irony lies in the fact that Kulipa collapsed in a sector that is currently booming. Monthly crypto card spending has surged from approximately USD 100 million in early 2023 to over USD 1.5 billion by the end of 2025. According to The Kobeissi Letter, monthly crypto card transaction volume reached USD 7.8 billion in May 2026, up 230% year-over-year.

Cumulative cryptocurrency card transaction volume from 2023 to 2026, Source: The Kobeissi Letter

Demand is red-hot, yet this issuer—which had already scaled significantly—suddenly collapsed. The infrastructure layer beneath the hype narrative is now undergoing accelerated consolidation.

反差还在于，Kulipa 倒在一个正在爆发的赛道里。加密卡消费额从 2023 年初的每月约 1 亿美元，涨到 2025 年底的每月逾 15 亿美元；据 The Kobeissi Letter 数据，2026 年 5 月加密卡月交易额已达 78 亿美元，同比增长 230%。

2023 年至 2026 年加密货币卡累计交易量，Source: The Kobeissi Letter

需求端热火朝天，但这家发卡量已上规模的公司，却突然崩塌，热叙事下的基础设施层正在加速洗牌。

对普通用户的启示很直接：选加密卡时，别只看返现和额度，先看清楚我的钱「平时放在谁那里」。采用消费时从自托管钱包直接扣款、发卡方不持有余额的产品，才能在下一个 Kulipa 倒下时全身而退。

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