Stripe raises $600M at nearly $36B valuation

Re:Stripe raises $600M at nearly $36B valuation by m11a on Friday April 17, 2020 @06:44AM (#22897859)

> If any non-EU companies know a cheaper way to process transactions in the EU, I'm all ears...

Depending on your volume, it's really not expensive to setup a legal entity in the UK. Since UK is leaving (unsure if EU financial access will continue) Ireland is a good alternative. A UK company costs < £100/yr to maintain. Depending on your volume, it may be worth exploring with your lawyer/accountant.

Perhaps there's merchant-of-record services too, that are incorporated in the EU and I believe legally act as an agent to sell your product.

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Re:Stripe raises $600M at nearly $36B valuation by dx034 on Friday April 17, 2020 @09:18AM (#22898700)

In pretty much every country you need a director or similar who's a resident of that country. There are agencies doing that for you but that's not cheap and not without risk. Running a company without residence is usually not worth it for small companies.

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Re:Stripe raises $600M at nearly $36B valuation by ttoinou on Friday April 17, 2020 @07:09AM (#22897987)

  A UK company costs < £100/yr to maintain

Accounting included ?

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Re:Stripe raises $600M at nearly $36B valuation by m11a on Friday April 17, 2020 @07:27AM (#22898063)

No. But you don't necessarily need an accountant in the UK.

Off the top of my head, the Companies House filing fee of around £15/yr, an address for the company (around £50/yr) are all you require to hold a UK company.

For a tech company that uses Xero and feeds in invoices programmatically filing the statutory returns by an accountant might cost £1000/yr (or 0 if you wish to DIY, the UK's HMRC makes self-filing easy unlike the IRS). Plus £360/yr for Xero (free accounting software probably won't cut it).

VAT returns and PAYE returns are pretty easy to self-file; Xero does them automatically and HMRC provides free software for it. The annual statutory accounts are more difficult, and you probably want an accountant.

Rough figures: if you want to be cheap, use Xero discounts and DIY, it's around £500/yr. With an accountant, but you still doing some of the work, perhaps £1500/yr.

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