Why I started Halocard

Back in 2024 I wanted to pay for a US service without it appearing on my bank statement, and assumed that would be simple. From outside the US, it turned out to be almost impossible.

Ed walking through a bustling Ghibli-style street bazaar of US-only merchant stalls, holding a plain black debit card.

Nothing on the market worked

I tried a Privacy.com debit card but had no US SSN, a Vanilla prepaid card that wouldn’t activate abroad, and a no-KYC crypto card blocked instantly for lacking 3D Secure verification. Every option built for someone else failed someone like me.

Hand-painted scene of Ed faced with declined Privacy, Vanilla prepaid, and crypto cards — none of them working.

Essential services shouldn’t only be available to US residents

Paying for Anthropic, ChatGPT, Meta or any US service shouldn’t depend on living in America and neither should access to USD as a stable global currency. Halocard gives you a real US-issued credit card from almost anywhere in the world.

Ghibli US SERVICES PARK theme-park entrance with merchant rides labelled ANTHROPIC, OPENAI, META, GOOGLE, APPLE, AMAZON, and ALIBABA. Ed at the gate holding a plain debit card is politely turned away by an attendant pointing at an ONLY US CARDS ACCEPTED sign.

So we built the card we needed

After meetings with 43 banks, seven months of development and three compliance audits, we built a private virtual Visa card with no mainstream consumer bank in the middle. That’s how Halocard was born.

Ghibli-style scene of Ed presenting the finished Halocard virtual Visa, the culmination of bank meetings, development, and compliance audits.

Privacy is a founding principle, not a feature

We collect only the personal data needed to open your account, stay compliant and prevent fraud, then pass it on and delete it from our servers. If we don’t need something, we won’t ask for it.

Inside-the-booth view of Halocard's relay clerk's office: Ed monitors a brass PRIVACY CONVERTER with HALOCARD intake and MASKED outlet on the merchant side, VERIFIED USER outlet and APPROVED intake on the VISA side, and a copper DATA DELETION furnace behind him catching leftover scraps.

We will never sell your data

We don’t sell, rent or share your personal information for advertising or marketing, we don’t pull credit reports, and we don’t report your activity to credit bureaus. None of that is in our business model, and it never will be.

Ed at the door of a Ghibli HALOCARD shopfront calmly waving off a small queue of sketchy data brokers (sandwich board reading BUY YOUR USER DATA, coin purse, CREDIT REPORTS clipboard). A WE DO NOT SELL YOUR DATA chalkboard hangs above the door.

Why I started Halocard

Back in 2024 I wanted to pay for a US service without it appearing on my bank statement, and assumed that would be simple. From outside the US, it turned out to be almost impossible.

Ed walking through a bustling Ghibli-style street bazaar of US-only merchant stalls, holding a plain black debit card.