The post doesn't name Kulipa, but Ready's own support pages previously identified it as the issuer
Solflare, a self-custodial wallet for Solana, abruptly lost its payment card service on Tuesday after Kulipa, its Paris-based card infrastructure partner, ran into solvency problems, although customers retained access to their crypto.
Vidor Gencel, Solflare's co-founder and co-CEO, said in an X post on July 28 that Kulipa "is winding down due to solvency issues and can no longer support Solflare Card, so cards stopped working abruptly today."
Solflare tried to find the company a buyer, but "the debt was too deep and the company essentially collapsed," Gencel said. The final cutoff apparently caught Solflare off guard as well.
- Public funding and customer disclosures reviewed by The Coinformer show that Kulipa's collapse, as described by Solflare, came only months after its latest investment.
- Although the $6.2 million round was announced on April 1, Kulipa founder Axel Cateland said it had closed in December 2025, bringing total funding to $9.2 million.
- Kulipa also claimed more than 120,000 issued cards and 20 customers, but publicly identified only Solflare, Ready, nSave and Flutterwave.
Warning signs
There were indications that some Kulipa-linked card programs were already retreating, although the available notices don't show that every cutoff resulted from Kulipa's financial problems.
For instance, nSave, a cross-border financial app, suspended new card issuance on May 11 after an unidentified partner stopped accepting certain customers. It later said cards in one region would stop working on June 18.
- Its terms name both Kulipa and Monavate, a regulated European payments provider, making it unclear which partner was responsible.
Ready, a self-custodial wallet for the Starknet blockchain formerly known as Argent, also disabled cards outside the European Economic Area on June 16 following an issuer change, giving some users about one hour's notice.
The Coinformer's comparison of Ready's own support pages found that its English security FAQ, updated July 20, now says identity checks are handled by an unnamed "regulated card issuer."
- Yet the archived version from September 2025 shows Ready was relying on Kulipa for ID verification.
The inconsistency could simply reflect a delayed website update following Ready's issuer transition and doesn't establish that the company knew about Kulipa's solvency problems.
Solflare said Kulipa never held customer balances because purchases were funded directly from users' wallets. Solflare expects to introduce a replacement within weeks, with Apple Pay, Google Pay, higher limits and cashback, although it hasn't identified the new provider.