Making crypto spendable anywhere with Karta
How Karta uses Privy to power self-custodial spending accounts
Debbie Soon
|Jun 16, 2026
Crypto has become a meaningful part of how millions of people save, invest, and move money. Spending it, however, is a different story.
For many users, turning crypto into something usable in the real world means navigating centralized exchanges, waiting for withdrawals, and paying fees at every step. This results in a disconnect between owning digital assets and actually using them.
Karta was built to solve that problem.
By combining self-custodial wallets with global card infrastructure, Karta enables users to spend their crypto anywhere Visa is accepted while maintaining ownership and control of their assets.
Turning crypto into everyday money
Karta believes crypto users shouldn't have to choose between ownership and convenience.
The company's vision was straightforward: build a financial product that feels as intuitive as a modern neobank while remaining fundamentally crypto-native under the hood.
To get there, the team needed to solve two challenges simultaneously. First, onboarding had to be effortless. Users shouldn't need to understand wallets, seed phrases, or blockchain infrastructure just to get started.
Second, Karta wanted to preserve the principles that brought many users to crypto in the first place. Rather than relying on traditional custodial models, the team set out to build an experience centered around self-custody without introducing additional complexity.
Achieving both would require wallet infrastructure that could disappear into the background while still giving users full ownership and control of their assets.
Where Privy comes in
Wallet infrastructure sits at the core of the Karta experience. Every user needs a wallet to receive, hold, and spend digital assets, but Karta didn't want wallet creation to become a barrier to getting started.
The team knew that the moment users were asked to think about seed phrases, wallet setup, or blockchain infrastructure, friction would follow. Instead, onboarding needed to feel familiar: create an account, get a card, and start using the product.
Privy's embedded wallet infrastructure allowed Karta to provision secure self-custodial wallets automatically as part of onboarding, removing complexity for users while preserving ownership and control of their assets.
"We wanted all of the benefits of self-custody without making users think about wallet setup. Privy lets us make wallets a seamless part of the product experience instead of another onboarding hurdle." — Nik Zimarkov, Founder at Karta
Building a self-custodial financial experience
With wallet infrastructure handled by Privy, Karta could focus on building the experience that sits on top of it.
Users can fund their accounts with crypto and spend through a Visa card accepted anywhere Visa operates, making it possible to move seamlessly between onchain assets and everyday purchases.
Underneath the surface, however, Karta is built on a fundamentally different model than most financial products.
Traditional banks and many crypto platforms take custody of customer funds. Karta believes users should be able to access modern financial services without giving up ownership of their assets. By building around self-custodial wallets, users retain control of their funds while Karta orchestrates the infrastructure required to make spending, transfers, and account management feel effortless.
For globally mobile users, that distinction matters. Assets aren't tied to a particular bank, geography, or institution, giving users greater flexibility over how they store, move, and spend their money.
The result is a product that combines the convenience users expect from a modern neobank with the ownership and portability that drew many of them to crypto in the first place.
What's next
Karta is building toward a financial home for globally mobile individuals: people who live across borders, earn online, and manage an increasing share of their wealth in digital assets. The company's long-term vision is to make moving between fiat and crypto as seamless as using any modern financial product.
"Karta is designed as a bank without a bank. Self-custody is at the core. The assets belong to the user, not to us. We're not holding your money; we're orchestrating it." — Nik Zimarkov, Founder at Karta
As more people choose to hold wealth onchain, Karta is betting the future of banking won't be about holding customer assets. It will be about helping people use them. Privy is excited to support Karta's vision of a financial system where users can seamlessly spend, move, and manage their assets while remaining firmly in control of them.
Spend crypto like everyday money. Get your Karta card, keep ownership of your assets, and pay anywhere Visa is accepted.
