Phantom Stays

UK born🇬🇧
US LLC🇺🇸 structure for Ecom biz
- US banking
- US Shopify payments (low fees)
- US Amex
0% tax residency in Paraguay 🇵🇾

That’s sovereignty

Fully optimized global life as a high earner

Not a playbook for all, but can’t go wrong with this. Congrats huge win 🏆

X anon says that I lie about my flight point results

Sad that more ppl don't believe that u can treat ur family to business class for 13x less points than the travel portals charge you.

3 People - PHL -> DUB for only 135,0000 points, then a positioning flight from DUB -> AGP for $700 total.

The business class leg would have cost us $18,300 if I would have paid cash. Instead I walked away paying $750 total.

This same flight would have cost me AT LEAST 1,830,000 points if I would have booked it on amex travel...

Working w an Italian 🇮🇹 ecom founder based in Malta 🇲🇹. tax optimized, running the Phantom playbook well - everything thru a US LLC. Doing $50k/mo selling consumables. he's about to flip his whole model into recurring subs to scale HARD.

Here's the issue. homie is running a $50k/mo business on debit cards. 0 knowledge of the US credit system, zero leverage, no cashback or points. Good thing - on the processing side he's smart enough to avoid Shopify Payments (sub models get frozen constantly n u have no real control of ur tokens) but he's randomly filling out public web forms for high-risk processors. just some hopium lol

Here's how we fix both problems on his upcoming trip to California:

1️⃣ Skip remote bank applications entirely. No need for him to toil with remote since he is actually going to the US. Chase, BoA, and Capital One same week. Since he's building US credit from scratch on an ITIN, walking into a branch instead of applying online drastically improves approval odds and starting limits. This is the foundation everything else snowballs from.

2️⃣ we kill the public-portal processor applications. Instead we're making direct private introductions inside Phantom. We have 3 partners that specialize in hooking foreign founders up with US processing.

Outcome here is twofold. Bulletproof processing clears the runway to push past 6 figs monthly w/o stressing about held funds. And the US credit profile he's building this month turns into massive credit lines and premium travel rewards within 12 months. No more debit card 🔥

Most founders selling into the US have no idea they're one branch visit away from unlocking the entire American credit system.

If ur running real volume on debit cards and public processor forms, we should talk.

Had a call this morning with a Syd 🇦🇺 based subscription ecom founder. 3 years in biz, currently migrating from an AU PTY LTD to a US Wyoming LLC (right move sir). Already sitting on $200k buying power across their Aussie Amex Platinum and Gold. Impressive, but he's playing a weak hand and he knows it.

Aussie multipliers are trash compared to the US. They've been stacking points for years only to watch them die on direct portal redemptions at 0.1 to 0.2 cents each. No US banking relationships to scale the new LLC. And they were blindly eyeing Dubai for tax residency without realizing what that actually commits them to.

Here's the full rebuild:

1️⃣ we use Amex GT to leverage their strong AU credit history straight into the US system. No waiting 9-12 months for an ITIN, no starting from scratch. Just have a real US address (we provide this) and their AU passport number, approved in 24-72 hours.

2️⃣ they grab the US Amex Business Gold and route ad spend there. 4x points. We explicitly told them to stop using the Platinum for ads since that's only pulling 1x to 2x, a massive leak for their volume (spends Ms)

3️⃣ Once they hit the $150k cap, we scale the credit profile with additional Gold cards tied to legitimate business entities, then layer in a Chase Sapphire for unlimited 3x on domestic travel.

🏦 For proper US banking, we're skipping the weak remote options. In-person bank run to New York City - opening multiple accounts in one trip while building a real relationship with Slash for the LLC.

🍯 On tax, we pivoted them off Dubai and onto Paraguay. Few grand to setup, 0% on foreign income, and unlike Dubai's 90-183 day presence requirement plus lease and company setup, Paraguay just needs a quick visit every few years. Built for someone who wants to nomad through Asia like him, not get anchored.

💳 And we fixed the pt redemption leak completely. Instead of burning points on garbage portal rates, we're transferring over his Aus amex points to the US, which will allow him to pull up to 7 cents per point on international first-class.

The old setup had them maxing out their Aussie limits while bleeding value on every redemption. The new stack turns every ad dollar into 4x points, every point into near-zero cost first-class travel, and every tax dollar saved into capital to reinvest.

If you're running serious volume outside the US credit system, and unsettled on your tax position as a global entreprenuer, we should talk. There's a lot more sitting on the table than people realize.

Chatted with a Canadian founder 🇨🇦 who set up a US LLC 6 months ago to scale. Right move chad, but like everyone I chat with, he just hasn't fully optimized this yet.

Guy also rips 4 international trips a MONTH, has a biz that prints profit, a US residential address, but the L - minimal strategy to back any of it up.

Another L - his Amex Canada account got shut down out of nowhere. Wiped every point he'd accumulated. And since he's got a US LLC with no ITIN, he's locked completely out of the US credit market. Last month he paid $4,000 cash out of pocket for a standard economy flight to Mykonos lol. Just straight retail. No points, no credit, no leverage.

Here's how we're fixing his structure on two timelines at once:

Immediate (Week 1)
🔐 Start ITIN acquisition with our global tax attorney, roughly 2 months for IRS processing
🔐 Slash corporate credit card as the bridge, underwrites off cash reserves not credit history, so he gets an instant line that scales with the business while his credit profile builds in the background

Months 2-12
🤝 Fly down in person to open foundational US bank accounts
🤝 Build the credit profile properly, this takes 8-12 months but sets him up for the full Chase/Amex stack later. Would be faster for him if his CA Amex acct didn't get cooked. Oh well. Better late than never.

For the actual bleeding, we stop him from ever paying retail cash again:

🔥 Instead of accumulating points slowly, we buy them during multiplier events. 100k purchased becomes 200k total. That $10,000 business class ticket to Mykonos turns into a couple thousand bucks out of pocket instead of $4k for economy.
🔥 Our Phantom white-glove Biz Class Flight service hunts the actual award availability so he doesn't need to learn how to play the pts game by himself.
🔥 Phantom Rates for dropping his out of pocket cost on hotels from $1k+ per night to a few hundred.

Nobody tells you that getting your home country card shut down can erase years of points overnight. Dual infrastructure, immediate credit float through Slash, longterm credit building stealth-like in the background.. this is how you never get caught exposed like that again.

If ur a foreigner running a US LLC without proper credit access and bleeding cash on flights, we should talk.