I opened a company last year. In my country we can't access Paypal or Stripe and international bank transfers are painful. I had to travel to Estonia because of the KYC stuff from the bank, the rest of the process was completed remotely.

Also the deposit insurance in my country is quite low, so saving money in Estonia is a good option for me.

I'm using the LHV Bank, they give you a multi-currency account, a great mobile application and also access to different worldwide markets (for investments, etc.).

Curious to know: what's your home country? What are the tax implications for you locally?

Personally none - I pay taxes in my home country and everyone is happy. The company rules (delayed income tax, income tax rate) might be subject to treaty that defines "command and control" - that is if the company is really located in Estonia or is it effectively in your home country? If you have an actual office or co founders from other countries or some other vague "company is actually located in estonia", then there are no tax implications of that, other than your personal income.

Me too! I used leapin for the whole process. Never had a more pleasant experience with bureaucratic procedures.

I'm getting ready to do this but haven't figured out a way to open a bank account there without visiting the country. How did you do that? I saw there's a service that will do it for you but it seems like an expensive monthly fee.

I opened my company with Leapin. Easy and fast.

If you don’t need a bank account and you can live with PayPal you don’t need to go there. I needed a bank account and credit card so I traveled to Tallinn and opened a bank account at LHV. You have to sign the documents at the bank office.

I think LHV Bank is working on a remote process with an interview using Skype, but it was not available several months ago.

Still, I have faced several issues setting up my small SaaS service: Stripe is not available and my Braintree application was rejected because they did not understand why I wanted to create a company in Estonia! It took me two weeks to explain that I was a nice guy and then everything went fine. I also had issues creating a merchant account in Coinbase, so I had to use Bitpay.

I'm in the process of opening remotely a company with Leapin. My first intention was to use Holvi for banking but I realized you need to pay 30€/month if you are a e-resident so I probably will switch to Transferwise Borderless.

To be honest, you should visit the country either way. Estonia is a pretty wonderful place, at least it was when I visited.

Why did you do it in Estonia?

English, stable currency, ability to do stuff online, mature and working banking system. Does not leave many interesting candidates.

What are the advantages over using Stripe Atlas and having a US Delaware C Corp for $500?

I tried to sign up for stripe atlas in beta and they didn't want me :)

More seriously - owning shares in us companies create scary tax implications that require some advice when having us clients. US banking system is stuck is in the 1800s and dealing with it is a very serious pain. US legal system, unlike European is very unfriendly for individuals - its just infeasible to do stuff yourself on a shoestring budget, without hiring professionals.

> US banking system is stuck is in the 1800s

As someone who has to work integrating to banks, yeah this is sad but true.

> its just infeasible to do stuff yourself on a shoestring budget, without hiring professionals.

Millions of new businesses are started every year in the US on a shoestring and without hiring professionals.

For foreign owned companies there are a myriad of complex reporting requirements a US person would never see.

Despite not even being a tax form some of these (e.g. FBAR) have penalties of 50% of the unreported amount. It's not something you want to leave to chance.

> Millions of new businesses are started every year in the US on a shoestring and without hiring professionals.

I don't think that's meaningful. There are 320 million people in the U.S., and only a tiny proportion of people anywhere would consider opening their business in another country.

That doesn't mean there isn't a high barrier to accessing the U.S. legal system. For example, as we know, well-funded parties often defeat poorer parties by simply threatening legal action, because the poorer party cannot afford to use the legal system.

Maybe it needs to be in the EU.

What are you using (if you are using anything) for taking credit card payments? Stripe is not available there, right?

Stripe is not in Estonia, so we applied to Braintree. It took us a couple of weeks and we were rejected at the beginning, but finally they accepted us.

Also 2checkout can be an option too.

Dang, I should go try and reapply, also e-resident, also got rejected pretty quickly. Good to know the guys are open to re-evaluation.

I was a Braintree customer for more than three years in another company. My experience in my former company was very good, so I was a bit surprised when I was rejected.

I wrote to them and I asked them to explain to me why they have rejected me. I told them I was an ex-customer and I could prove it. So they came back and they asked for an insane amount of information and documentation. Something I learned is the 'no-paper' model of Estonia is something Braintree doesn't like at all.

I had a problem with a very specific request, and Leapin helped me to get it in less than 24 hours.

So yes, go and try again!

It's so unfortunate that Stripe isn't supported in Estonia yet! It would be a major boon given the good reputation Stripe has among developers.

I've worked with both Braintree and Stripe, and I'm honestly not sure why people harp on about Stripe so much compared to BT. In my experience, they're both super easy to work with.

Maybe it's a regional thing but I never encountered Stripe in the UK/EU. I don't think people know of it.

On the other hand of anecdata, I'm in the UK, and plenty of people I know have heard of and use it. It's the developer go-to for most projects I've seen, but BT does appeal with Paypal integration.

Stripe is used by https://pythonanywhere.com I believe they are based in the UK according to their payment statements.

What about Paymill?

What bank are you using? Apparently Stripe doesn't accept Holvi or Transferwise (which indeed are not banks)

Investigating that topic, but taking card payments is not a part of my primary business.

Can you open a company without visiting the country?

yes, but you cannot open a bank account. You can use holvi (https://about.holvi.com/e-residents/) but I haven't used it and don't know details on how it differs from a regular bank.