Our story | Halocard

Why I built Halocard

How it began.

Back in 2024, I wanted to purchase a service from the US that I didn’t want to appear on my bank statement.

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

But nothing worked.

I tried a Privacy debit card but didn’t have an SSN, a Vanilla prepaid card but couldn't it activate outside the US, and a no-KYC crypto card but without 3D-Secure it was immediately blocked.

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

So we built the card we needed.

After meeting with 43 banks, spending 7 months in development, and undergoing 3 compliance audits, we built a private virtual Visa card without a mainstream consumer bank in the middle. Thus, Halocard was born.

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

What we believe

Privacy is a core principle.

We collect the minimum amount of personal data necessary to create your account, remain compliant and prevent fraud. We pass your data on and then delete it from our servers. If we don’t need it, we don’t ask for it.

Inside-the-booth view of Halocard's relay clerk's office: Ed monitors a brass PRIVACY CONVERTER with four labelled slots — HALOCARD intake and MASKED outlet on the merchant side, VERIFIED USER outlet and APPROVED intake on the VISA side. A separate copper DATA DELETION furnace behind him catches leftover scraps via a chute, so no real user data ever leaves the booth.

US services shouldn’t require a US address.

Paying for Anthropic, Netflix, Amazon, or any US-based service shouldn’t depend on being a US resident. Neither should access to USD as a stable global currency. Halocard gives you a real US-issued credit card from 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.

We will NEVER sell your data.

We don’t sell, rent, or share your personal information for advertising or marketing. We don’t obtain credit reports. We don’t report your activity to credit bureaus. None of that is in our business model, and none of it ever 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; iridescent Halocards glow in the bay windows.

How a Halocard actually works

It’s a virtual credit card.

US-issued, virtual credit cards. Not debit. Not prepaid. Real credit BIN, issued through Visa’s network by Third National. Higher merchant acceptance than international debit or prepaid cards. No credit pull, no impact on your score.

Outdoor Ghibli sunset podium: an iridescent Halocard with HALOCARD top-left and VISA bottom-right sits on the tallest middle platform with a gold medal draped over it; dull grey PREPAID and DEBIT cards sit on side platforms. A chalkboard scoreboard with columns PREPAID, DEBIT, CREDIT shows CREDIT winning by a wide margin.

Full control over every card.

Set spending limits, lock or cancel cards instantly and set your own billing address. You're in control conrol of your information.

Ed at a warm Ghibli brass control panel with monitor and labelled controls — TRANSACTION, DAILY LIMIT, MONTHLY LIMIT, TOTAL LIMIT, CANCEL & REPLACE, LOCK, RETIRED — with a rainbow card glowing on the central screen and his grey cat watching.

All your payments are masked.

When you pay with Halocard, the merchant doesn’t see your bank, name, or address. They see a card transaction with whatever name and billing address you set. Your funding source and identity stay invisible. The masking is the whole point.

Inside a warm Ghibli masquerade boutique, Ed hands an iridescent Halocard to an elderly shopkeeper at a brass register. Masked dancers swirl in the background under hanging lanterns; the merchant only sees the masked card details on the receipt.

Our deliberate choices

Paid only. No free tier.

No free tiers and a monthly subscription of $12 for 12 cards. We have more cards if you need them, but our paying customers are the reason we do this. A free tier also doesn't allow us to deliver exceptional service to every single customners.

Ghibli plaza with three diverging paths: a FREE CARDS dragon's lair on the left, a brass HALOCARD escalator rising into the golden sky in the middle with an upward arrow, and a BANK CARDS fortress maze on the right. Two ornate WE PAY FOR USER DATA carriages wait beside the bank-cards path; Ed gestures confidently toward the HALOCARD escalator.

Identity verification because the law requires it.

Every legitimate card company in the USA requires identity verification in conformance with the US Customer Identification Program for Banks regulation .

Layered Ghibli scene: foreground IDENTITY CHECK booth where Ed hands his ID to the clerk, a brass turnstile attaches to the side guarded by two uniformed Ghibli officers in peaked caps, a PAY WITH VISA banner strung overhead. Through the turnstile a bustling bazaar where verified users shop with iridescent Halocards. Beyond the bazaar, a warm-brick ISSUING BANK and a taller stone VISA tower with brass pneumatic tubes arcing overhead connecting booth → ISSUING BANK → VISA.

Bootstrapped on purpose.

No VC funding. No board pushing us to monetise data or chase growth at the cost of user trust. The only people we answer to the are the users paying us.

Inside a dim Ghibli steakhouse with ED'S WAREHOUSE visible through the window, Ed sits across from a top-hatted pinstripe investor who slides an enormous bulging money sack across the white tablecloth and points at a card reading GROW AT ALL COSTS / AUTOMATE EVERYTHING / MONETIZE USER DATA. Ed politely raises his hand to decline.

Delete your account any time.

Close your account and we remove your data permanently from our servers. Note: Certain laws require our partners retain some information for legal and compliance purposes.

Ed in his Ghibli workshop with a brass USER DATA safe on one side and a glowing copper DELETION FURNACE on the other, calmly feeding a paper file into the flames. Warm smoke rises through brass piping.

What Halocard doesn't solve

We don’t offer anonymity.

Visa still sees your purchases. Identity verification is required (albeit the minimum required to comply). Anyone selling full anonymity inside a major card networks isn’t telling the truth.

Grand Ghibli vaulted brick-and-glass hall with a prominent overhead VISA NETWORK sign and VISA badge. Brass pneumatic tubes arc across the ceiling carrying packages between merchant-labelled booths (ANTHROPIC and others). Capped operators work at the stations while Ed watches — every transaction still passes through the network.

We’re not a no-KYC card provider.

No-KYC cards are very risky. Low acceptance, blocked by most merchants, and they operate in legal grey zones that can result in frozen accounts or lost funds without recourse.

Three side-by-side Ghibli market stalls labelled NO-KYC CRYPTO CARD (a hooded shady figure), PREPAID CARD (an older salesman shuffling cards), and HALOCARD (Ed welcoming customers at a friendly till). Cobbled street, hanging lanterns.

We can’t issue cards everywhere.

Card networks place restrictions on where cards can be issued. Russia and North Korea carry sanction risk. India and China have an unfavourable regulatory environment they choose not to participate in. The complete list is in our support docs.

Ed and his grey cat on a grassy Ghibli hilltop overlooking a sprawling outdoor world-map mosaic. Most continents in soft sage-green tiles; restricted countries in soft coral-red and labelled — China, India, Myanmar, Nepal, North Korea, Vietnam, Belarus, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Syria, Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela. A bustling vendor metropolis rises beyond, rooftop signs reading ANTHROPIC, OPENAI, META, GOOGLE, APPLE, AMAZON, ALIBABA.