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Offshore Company + Bank + Merchant Acc. for a startup?
- Thread starter Flycatcher
- Start date
This may easely be accomplished with nominees and a Cyprus company.
I'm suggesting Cyprus because you won't be able to find any reliable payment processor for a offshore company in the Seychelles, Belize, Mauritius or most other of these tax havens!
Only possible to get it in Cyprus as one package! You may find something similar in other European countries but then you won't have the same level of privacy and your neighbour will find out who is operating this firm.
despite the fact that Cyprus is providing the best privacy for companies registered there then what would you say if we want to ignore privacy and just want a complete package for banking, merchant account, paypal payment acceptance and maybe even some more payment options.. would a UK £1 company be a possibility you think?
I'm curious, how would this show out in practice? I'm already aware that it's really hard to find a reputable bank who accept offshore companies (e.g. none of the Caribbean ones are reputable). Is this also true for merchant account providers?
But do they, if I use nominees? I've seen claims that you can use nominees for several European companies.
UK will absolutely be seen as a reputable jurisdiction. Compared to offshore jurisdictions I can at least think of the following disadvantages:
- Taxation
- Public registers (may possibly be avoided by using nominees)
- Strict and annual accounting requirements
- Audit requirements if your company gets large
- Your company can get sued
Positives:
- Incorporation is cheaper than in offshore jurisdiction
- Reputable country
- More banks will start accepting you
- Cheap access from Europe
So in short, if you want to establish a company which pays its taxes, are ready to deal with accounting and legal matters, and are OK with losing some privacy, then the term you are looking for isn't really "offshore" anymore but "establishing a company abroad".
@Flycatcher thank you very much, that is what I was looking for. An entity that can deal with taxes and all the legal stuff. I want something in front of my offshore setup and something where I can get the money float through to the protected entities in matters of assets.
Do you have any idea what the costs is for maintaining a UK company considering accounting, filing of financial report etc.? I mean more like a general price range for a small company doing less than £100k / year!
Do you have any idea what the costs is for maintaining a UK company considering accounting, filing of financial report etc.? I mean more like a general price range for a small company doing less than £100k / year!
What countries. Sorry to sound stupid but as far as I know not many other countries allow nominees if any other?
No, sorry, I have no idea of this. Maybe someone else can answer this question for you. It's quite easy to find out the fees through: list out what you need and then shop around and ask for various services and their prices.
More information about the UK:
Set up a private limited company - GOV.UK
It seems like establishing a company only costs £12, which is surprisingly cheap! But take account of all other fees...
I did some research on this. It heavily varies on countries. It seems like that many countries do accept nominees, but have laws which make nominees legally responsible for wrongdoings of a company.
UK is an example where nominees would be legally responsible. It also seems to be so for Ireland, where nominees "share the same rights and responsibilities as regular directors".
So I would see, that even if nominees are allowed, it will be hard to get a trustworthy nominee. If a nominee knows he will be legally responsible, they are not going to be a nominee for every Tom, Dick and Harry.
The internet of course is already full of nominee services eagerly ready to serve you, and for such instances you have to be very careful.
But what is the problem? I don't understand that part, if you don't mind please elaborate
@drillbill Say you appoint a nominee for your company, your company does something and it gets sued. The nominee's a*s is on the line. If some offshore countries nominees won't be responsible in this case but in the UK they will so there are far less people willing to be nominees for you.
That said, if you do find some then more power to you.
That said, if you do find some then more power to you.
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Required:
- The bank must be open to IBCs
- The bank must be set up to handle ongoing transactions on a regular basis, e.g. daily or at least weekly
- The bank must have an online interface
- The bank should be located in a reasonable stable jurisdiction. E.g. No Mongolian or Liberian banks where corruption is a likely possibility and I lose my money
Preferred:
- Bank secrecy (as much as still possible post-AEOI)
- Merchant accounts at the bank
- I try to avoid Caribbean after several reports that those banks are not generally of high quality.
- National Bank of Dominica
Fast reply, declared that I'd need a Dominican company to open a bank account with them.
- Global Bank of Commerce (Antigua)
Fast reply, currently only open account for Antiguan registered companies.
- ICICI Bank (Singapore)
Fast and polite reply, they do not currently open accounts for non-residents.
- Hang Seng Bank (Hong Kong)
Provided me a list of documentations I'd need to provide so that they could process the case. Note that there has been no information specifically regarding whether they'd accept IBCs. It's like a chicken and egg situation where you don't know where you should register your IBC but only find out after you have registered it.
Unconfirmed reports say that BVI IBCs and some other IBCs are strongly not recommended for Hong Kong anymore. Some seem to be fine like Samoa.
- China CITIC Bank (Hong Kong)
Pretty much identicial to Hang Seng Bank except with their own wording of course, with an important exception: This bank told that I would personally need to visit Hong Kong.
- National Bank of Vanuatu
This bank never replied to me. My guess is that they only prefer higher-profile clients.
- Capital Security Bank (Cook Islands)
Lots of polite and quick replies, eventually I found out that the minimum investment required to open an account with them is 10,000 USD. I was not able to proceed as I couldn't meet that sum at the moment. I then read that this bank specializes in asset holding and is not exactly a bank meant for day-to-day transactions. Quite expected as this bank advertises to be a "private bank".
Banks I have not contacted but I feel like not using:
- Loyal Bank because of several reports of poor service.
- Rietumu Bank and other Latvian banks because of sudden closure of accounts and alleged corruption
- Euro Pacific Bank because even though Peter Schiff is said to be a bright guy, Glassdoor reports declare that this company is not really a pleasant place to work at, and if it really is so, I'm not really
expecting good service if so.
- Lots of banks who have too high minimums
- Lots of banks who, told by several sources, do not open accounts for IBCs
I don't want to make anything illegal in the company so I'm fine. What if the nominees are corporate nominees does it makes a difference?
Will look into it immediately do you know any reliable agent for this? or maybe roughly the costs setup + maintaining the entity? This sounds good.
The approach taken seems to be valid. You need something that works for a jurisdiction or say even Europe that is accepted by a broad range of banks. So Cyprus, BVI, Malta, UK and so on are all accepted in Europe by normal banks (also offshore banks) but also by the most merchant account providers.
What bank and payment processor you found for this setup? I read all your post already 3 times you seem to be a very wise person flycatcher hope you can help me a little with banking and payment processing. Today I use PayPal and Skrill for all payments but I have no debit card to take money out 
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