Why we chose limits over lies

Fundly has two tiers. The Instant card, which you can get with an email address and a phone number in a few minutes, and the Verified tier, which requires identity verification and unlocks higher limits, a physical card and an IBAN account.

The Instant card is the thing people get most excited about, and it is also the thing we are most careful about. This post is about why it exists in the shape it does.

What people hear, and what we mean

When someone reads "card in minutes, no documents", a certain kind of reader hears "a card nobody can trace". That is not what we are offering and we want to say so before anyone signs up for the wrong reason.

The Instant card is a light-verification product. Light is not none. At sign-up we check your email, your phone, your country, your device, and we screen you against sanctions lists. What we do not do at that stage is ask for a passport scan and a utility bill.

The trade for skipping the documents is limits. Monthly load limits, per-transaction limits, no ATM access or very little, no IBAN. At launch we expect the monthly limit to land somewhere between 1,000 and 2,500 EUR equivalent, with single transactions around 500 EUR. The exact numbers are set by our issuing partner and by the regulations they operate under, not by us, and your Fundly dashboard shows you where you stand against them at all times. Limits apply, always.

The limits are not a flaw in the product. They are the reason the product can exist.

Why regulators allow this at all

It helps to understand the logic, because it is reasonable.

Anti-money-laundering rules in most jurisdictions are risk-based. A product that can move 50,000 EUR a month needs to know exactly who is using it. A product that caps out at a few thousand, cannot withdraw much cash, and cannot receive bank transfers presents a much smaller risk, and the rules allow simplified due diligence for it. Prepaid cards with low limits have worked this way in Europe for years.

We are not exploiting a loophole. We are using a tier that was designed for exactly this: people who want to spend modest amounts with a light sign-up, and who can step up to full verification when they want more.

Who it is actually for

The Instant card was designed with a few people in mind.

• The person who does not trust every service with their ID. You want to buy something from a site you have never used. You would rather not hand your full identity to a fintech for that. A low-limit card with a light sign-up is a sensible tool.
• The freelancer who just got paid. Rent is due Friday and you have USDT in a wallet. Verification can wait until next week.
• The traveller who just landed. New country, no local account, need a SIM and a train ticket.
• The person in a country where getting a document verified takes weeks. Address proofs do not exist everywhere. The Instant card lets you start while you sort the rest.

None of these people are trying to do anything wrong. All of them have been badly served by products that demand everything up front or offer nothing at all.

Who it is not for

If you want to move large amounts without anyone knowing, this is not the product and we will not pretend it is. The limits make it useless for that, the screening makes it risky for that, and we cooperate with lawful requests like every licensed operator does. We would rather lose a sign-up than mislead one.

We also keep a short list of words that never appear on our site, the ones that promise secrecy rather than access. A product should be described by what it requires, not by what it lets you skip.

Why not just verify everyone?

A fair question, and the answer is that we tried the alternative and it excludes the people we started this for.

Full verification is a solved problem for someone with an EU passport, a fixed address, and a utility bill in their name. It is a wall for a 24-year-old developer in Lagos who lives with family and has no bill in her name, or a nomad whose only proof of address is an Airbnb receipt. Those people can still verify with us eventually, and we work hard to make the document list flexible, but forcing it on day one means they never get to day one.

So we put the light tier first and let people choose when to step up.

What "stepping up" looks like

Verification in the Fundly web app takes a few minutes for most people: a photo of an ID document, a selfie, and in some countries a proof of address. Once approved, your limits rise, a physical card becomes available, and, where we have launched it, you can open an EUR IBAN account.

Nothing about your Instant card changes. Same card number, same balance, same history. You just get more room.

The honest version of the trade

Every tier decision in fintech is a trade between access and control. Most products pick one end and market it as a virtue: "bank-grade compliance" on one side, "sign up and nobody will ask" on the other. We think both slogans are lies of omission.

Our version is: start light, with limits you can see, and grow into more when you want it. We would rather write that sentence than a punchier one that we would have to walk back.

If that sounds like the right kind of boring, join the waitlist at /join.