US banking and Stripe for foreign founders: what is actually required

What a bank actually verifies

A US business account is opened for the company, not for you personally — and US law (the Bank Secrecy Act and the FinCEN customer due diligence rule) requires the bank to verify two separate things before it can open one. First, the company: that it legally exists, is in good standing with its state, and has a federal tax identity (the EIN). Second, the people: every beneficial owner holding 25% or more, plus at least one person with significant control, identified with government-issued photo ID. For a non-resident owner, that ID is a passport. No SSN is required of the owner for either step — the company’s EIN is the tax number the account runs on.

Two address facts cause more confusion than everything else combined. The company needs a US address on its state record — that is the registered agent and principal address from formation, and it is normal. But several providers separately ask for the company’s principal place of business, and for that field they will not accept a registered agent’s address, a PO box, or a UPS Store address. Your real operating address — including your home address abroad — is the honest answer to that field, and the providers that serve foreign founders are built to accept it there. Putting the agent’s address in both fields is a common, avoidable denial.

The document set, exactly

Every route below asks for some version of the same four items. Have all four in hand, as clean PDFs, before you start any application:

• The filed formation document. Articles of Organization (LLC) or Articles of Incorporation (corporation), as filed with the state — the stamped or certified copy from the state record, not a draft.
• The EIN confirmation letter. The IRS CP 575 notice, or Letter 147C if the CP 575 is lost (our guide to getting an EIN without an SSN covers both). The number alone is not enough for most providers; they upload-check the letter, and the company name on it must match the formation document character for character — punctuation and the “LLC” suffix included.
• The operating agreement or bylaws. Not always mandatory at application, but routinely requested, and the document that answers “who owns what percentage” without a follow-up round.
• A valid passport for every owner of 25% or more. Unexpired, legible, and matching the name used on the formation paperwork.

Order matters. The company must exist before the EIN is applied for, and the EIN letter must exist before a bank application is worth starting. Applying to a bank with the EIN “on its way” produces a stalled or declined application that some providers will not let you simply rerun.

The realistic account routes

Four routes account for nearly every working setup we see. None of them is a bank’s promise — each application is underwritten on its own facts — but their published eligibility rules differ in ways that decide which one fits you:

Sequencing advice that follows from those rules: apply to one provider, with a complete file, and wait for its answer before applying to the next. Simultaneous applications with inconsistent business descriptions create their own problems, and a declined application is rarely improved by resubmitting it unchanged.

How Stripe payouts actually work

Stripe’s rule is jurisdictional, and it is the reason the US company exists: a Stripe account belongs to a business based in a country Stripe supports, and payouts go to a bank account in that same country, in the business’s name. For a US company that means a US account — one of the routes above — and there is no setting that pays a US Stripe account out to a bank in your home country. Stripe verifies the business (legal name, EIN, address, what it sells) and the account representative’s identity; a passport is the standard ID for a non-resident representative, and Stripe may ask for more — a website that shows what is sold, invoices, or supplier evidence — before or after the first charges.

Timing, from Stripe’s published payout schedule for US accounts: the first payout arrives 7–14 days after the first successful payment, a fraud-prevention hold that applies to everyone. After that, standard US payouts land 2 business days after the payment date. What happens next is a separate leg that Stripe is not part of: moving the money from your US account to yourself at home is a wire or transfer from your bank or Wise, at that provider’s fees and timing. Budget for both legs when you price delivery promises to your own customers.

One tax note, stated as mechanics rather than advice: Stripe collects a W-8BEN-E from foreign-owned US companies to document the owner’s foreign status for US withholding purposes. Whether your company also has US filing obligations — most foreign-owned single-member LLCs file a pro forma Form 1120 with Form 5472 every year, covered in Guide 02 — is a question for your tax preparer, and it exists whether or not Stripe ever asks about it.

What gets applications denied

• Name mismatches. The company name differs between the formation document, the EIN letter, and the application — a dropped “LLC”, a punctuation difference, a trade name used where the legal name belongs. The single most common fixable cause.
• The agent’s address offered as the place of business. A registered agent address is a mail and legal-notice address. Providers that test for it — Mercury states the rule outright — decline or later close accounts that use it as the operating address.
• No describable business. A vague description, no website, and nothing that shows what will be sold or to whom. Underwriters approve businesses they can describe in a sentence; “consulting” with no more detail is not a sentence.
• Unsupported country or industry. Founders resident in countries under US sanctions or on a provider’s restricted list, and industries on a provider’s prohibited list (money transmission without a licence, gambling, and adult content are recurring examples), are declined regardless of paperwork quality. Check the provider’s current list before applying, not after.
• Applying too early. Before the state filing is approved, before the EIN letter exists, or before the company’s own record is consistent. Each application is judged on the file as it stands that day.
• A lapsed company. Providers re-check state standing after opening — at the first annual review, a company that has drifted into bad standing or administrative dissolution gets its account restricted. Keeping the company current is banking maintenance, not just state compliance; our guide to annual reports and franchise taxes covers the filings involved.

What Sethhost does — and does not do

Sethhost’s part of this is the file, not the decision. Hosted produces the formation document and runs the EIN workflow, and your portal holds the filed formation document, the EIN confirmation, and your operating agreement in the exact form the applications above ask for — so the document set is assembled before you apply, not hunted for during one. Hosted keeps the company in good standing and its calendar watched, which is the part of account maintenance that depends on the state record. Sethhost does not open bank or Stripe accounts, is not a bank or a payment processor, cannot submit applications on your behalf to providers that require the owner to apply personally, and does not promise any provider’s approval — no honest service can, because the underwriting decision is the provider’s. What we can promise is narrower and real: the paperwork will be complete, consistent, and in your hands in the order the applications need it.