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My top issues running my business on Stripe: 1) Many countries still only allow depositing a single currency (i.e. Aus/AUD), doubling the cost of transaction d

My top issues running my business on Stripe: 1) Many countries still only allow depositing a single currency (i.e. Aus/AUD), doubling the cost of transaction due to the currency conversion, even tripling when we have to convert it back to pay our bills. I always get told either "soon", or "not possible due to the law", despite competitors doing it. 2) If we were an EU company, we'd get charged 1.4%+25c on transactions in the EU, where most of our customers are. Instead, because we're selling from Australia, we get charged 2.9% for some arbitrary reason. This coupled with 1) puts our all-in transaction fees at 5%+ :( 3) I think billing the vendor for refund fees is a really retrograde step - it increases friction in the decision for us when a customer asks for a refund, and industry wide is going to cause less happy customers and less card users online. It's already hard enough convincing Dutch/German customers to use a credit card online. If any non-EU companies know a cheaper way to process transactions in the EU, I'm all ears...

pc 7y ago
Great feedback... thank you. In case it's useful, some context on them: On (1), we started an FX team this year. (There are a lot of legal complexities here around how the funds move, who has title to what at which moment, and so on.) But we're investing significantly in improving it and it should get better soon. On (2), the core issue is card network pricing rules -- by design, they discriminate on the basis of where the business is located. We happily extend EU fees to all EU legal entities, however, and would be happy to work with you to set that up. On (3), refunds aren't free for Stripe, and we were previously in a position where businesses with a lot of refunds were being subsidized by those who didn't. We want to give this margin away more sensibly. Still, all the issues you bring up are real and I'd like us to find better solutions.
- trevor-e 7y ago
  Just want to say thanks for being so transparent with your answers in this thread, really appreciated. As a fly on the wall to most of this -- I don't have a business myself, yet ;) -- I'm learning a lot so far.
  - m11a 7y ago
    Ditto. I don't know how he finds the time, and always touches his email in to make himself available to customers. It's customer service done right and it's great to see.
- econcon 7y ago
  Isn't FX a done deal based on how TransferWise is able to do it. Maybe you guys can collaborate with them and make payouts in any currency possible atleast in countries where there are no Forex restrictions like Hong Kong.
  - joering2 7y ago
    Please no. TransferWise is terrible at customer support and internet is full of horror stories of people founds being frozen. The are the new incarnation of good ole’ paypal. You will get your account frozen the moment you wire more than$1,500 as per my own experience with 3 different businesses giving them a chance. I hope Stripe which is amazing will never have anything to do with TransferFraud.
    - byefruit 7y ago
      Not affiliated with TransferWise in any way but just want to say that this is totally the opposite of my experience and that of pretty much everyone I know who uses TransferWise. We've moved hundreds of thousands of dollars through them over the last couple of years with no problems on their end (we've had problems with banks failing to transfer correctly though..)
      - joering2 7y ago
        Glad to know your experience.
      - candu 7y ago
        Also not affiliated with them, and have been very satisfied so far. OTOH, I'm in Canada, and I've only used them for personal transfers. I have no idea how they perform for businesses, nor do I know whether they work well for individuals in other countries.
      - kernelbugs 7y ago
        I've had the same (mostly) great experience with them. My only issues with TransferWise have been having to ask recipients for their full addresses and then manually having to translate address schemes into something that fits in the boxes TransferWise provides in their forms. Sometimes things don't map over 1-to-1 (some Japanese and Taiwanese addresses, for example). I've also found that some Japanese banks only have one branch without a name and Transferwise requires a branch name. I eventually figured things out by researching the branch number online though. All minor gripes though. Transferwise has let my business operate smoothly and make connections to vendors that would otherwise be cost-prohibitive to pay.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- plantain 7y ago
  >(3), refunds aren't free for Stripe, and we were previously in a position where businesses with a lot of refunds were being subsidized by those who didn't. We want to give this margin away more sensibly. I understand they're not free, but I also understand Stripe does get a considerable portion back that they are no longer passing on? Couldn't this just have been applied to the problematic businesses then rather than all?
  - pc 7y ago
    It varies based on the card type, country, and other things. We could expose all of that more directly but the trade-off there is obviously pricing complexity, which we'd like to avoid. In our analysis in making this change, we saw that this simply makes little difference for the vast majority of businesses. For example, if you're processing $100k/year and refund 5% of your payments (which would be on the high end of normal), it works out to about $12/month. While refund rate of course is not definitively coupled to the quality of a business, we do see across our portfolio that it is strongly correlated. Given a basket of possible fees (for example, higher fees on Amex, which most other providers have), we prefer the fees that, on the margin, are least consequential for the businesses that are doing the best job of serving their customers. Having said all of that, none of our pricing is cast in stone, and we always genuinely appreciate feedback, including contrary views.
    - infinitelurker 7y ago
      Are those fees also present for transactions that are refunded immediately before they batch (i.e. testing). Let's say a stripe IP wasn't whitelisted on the server and started being denied coming back, causing transactions to fail. If I want to do a quick live environment test on this it now costs my client money, which is not ideal.
      - adambyrtek 7y ago
        You can do that using Stripe test environment and test cards without any fees. Refunds can take over a week to get processed by some banks, so testing on live data doesn't sound like a great idea. But even if you have to do a couple of live transactions I don't see how the cost of refunds could be significant.
- sealthedeal 7y ago
  You should consider chatting with us @routefusion :) developer.routefusion.co we will solve all of those nasty FX problems your customers are having. Already doing it for a few other e-comm platforms that link into Stripe.
- BartBoch 7y ago
  A solution, it seems, might be to allow users to get free refunds for up to 5% transactions in current month. Anything above that is paid. This way regular members are not penalized by big refunders...
rasz 7y ago
Those arent issues, they are the reasons for the valuation.
tarr11 7y ago
Completely agree on #3. Felt like a big blow to have Stripe do this. A lot of subscription based businesses were built around "no-hassle refunds" as a core feature enabled by Stripe and will now need to rethink this.
- preinheimer 7y ago
  This is the position we're in (our 'legacy' pricing will go away this year). We've decided to just eat it.
- adrr 7y ago
  Stripe isn’t being transparent on refunds. The issuing bank returns interchange on a refund. The true cost to stipe is a fraction of a penny to put the request on to the network. Other processors will refund interchange, this is unique to stripe. I am sure stripe is refunding interchange for their larger merchants that are on interchange plus billing. There is no way target is eating interchange on refunds. They are squeezing their smaller merchants for more money.
  - rapind 7y ago
    This is actually what prompted us to start looking at interchange plus processors, plus the issue that our negotiated deal in Canada (where we're based) doesn't apply to our US clients. We went with Stripe for "simple" pricing knowing there were better deals out there, but it's no longer that simple for us at least.
alharith 7y ago
4) It's just way too expensive, in general, nowadays. Stripe's market leader position should allow it to negotiate lower fees, but for some reason doesn't seem to be part of the business plan.
sauravt 7y ago
Hi, I couldn't agree more with your concerns. I am working on a solution to solve this. Please reach out to me via email on my profile. Thanks
Cu3PO42 7y ago
German checking in. One of the reasons why it’s hard to get us to use a CC is that many of us don’t have credit cards. And why would we? (Except for online payments and other fringe cases.) However, Stripe offers SEPA direct debit, which is usable with any European bank account and may work better for you. EDIT: This seems to have sparked some confusion. I'm not saying Germans don't do card payments, I was only speaking of credit cards. We do all have and use debit cards, however, those are of a national scheme with wonderfully low fees, but no online usability.
- adambyrtek 7y ago
  I used to live in Poland (so just across the border from Germany) and now I'm a UK resident, and your question is really baffling, since in both of these countries people use (contactless) card payments for pretty much everything. Germany is definitely an outlier and your comment doesn't really explain why. Is this a cultural thing, regulatory issue, or maybe banks colluding to protect their interests?
  - antonkm 7y ago
    Swede here. Really baffling for me too. My kids have pretty much never even seen cash. I use the nationwide app Swish to send money to people using their phone number (almost every Swede is connected since it's pushed by all big banks) and only use contactless credit card. How come Germany is so cash positive? Personally I think Sweden has gone a bit far, where some old people have been put in a weird spot where they can't pay because they're technologically illiterate.
    - mssngrtrn 7y ago
      Another German. We use "cards" all the time. But these are just cashless and tied to our SEPA accounts (so not a credit card).
      - thesimon 7y ago
        >But these are just cashless and tied to our SEPA accounts (so not a credit card). which wouldn't be a problem for shopping online if they had a Visa or MasterCard cobrand, as these can be debit and tied to your bank account as well. It's only slowly changing with some Sparkassen issuing MasterCard debit cobranded cards in late fall (https://www.f-i.de/News/ITmagazin/Archiv/2020/Einfach-mobil-handeln/Loesungen-Praxis/Eine-Karte-ueberall-einsetzbar https://www.f-i.de/News/ITmagazin/Archiv/2020/Einfach-mobil-...)
pc86 7y ago
How is it arbitrary that you get charged a rate for a service based on where you are?
rdslw 7y ago
ad3: I think it's the opposite youre saying. As a customer I can always use chargeback if you have any 'friction' about fulfilling my refund. chargeback works with my bank, no matter what stripe or vendor thinks.
eknam 7y ago
https://www.adyen.com/ https://www.adyen.com/
anthony_barker 7y ago
we are working on a blockchain based card processing solution which depends on your volumes. Ping me
sophiesak 7y ago
Hi there! I'm a product manager on our payment methods team at Stripe. We're working on a beta to bring EU payment methods to Australian-domiciled customers. They're both cheaper than cards, and have significant conversion uplift. Mind emailing me at sophies@stripe.com?
PixelPaul 7y ago
I agree with all this and it may be the reason I leave stripe soon. I deal a lot in USD as an Australian company but stripe won’t allow us to charge in USD and settle into our USD bank accounts. But others will. Also the refund issue is crazy, no other provider we use does it.
- adambyrtek 7y ago
  IANAL, but couldn't you incorporate a wholly-owned US subsidiary using something like Stripe Atlas to handle USD payments and reduce your fees? By the way, my company has the opposite problem. Our Stripe account is registered in the UK and even though we process payments for Australian customers in AUD their local banks still charge them an extortionate "foreign transaction fee". This means that we had to open a separate Stripe account registered in Australia just to avoid that.
  - PixelPaul 7y ago
    i dont want to open a US business just to process US payments. the cost and time would be to high. and taxes. did you open a australian stripe account without an australian business?
    - adambyrtek 7y ago
      We had to incorporate in Australia anyway, so I guess you're in a different situation.
dalanmiller 7y ago
Hey there - would love to have a chat with you about some of the issues you're facing and make sure we're tracking accordingly. Care flicking me an email at dalan@stripe.com or DMing @StripeAustralia?
brongondwana 7y ago
Here to second this. We have a USD account in Australia and can receive USD payments directly as USD from Pin, but from Stripe we have to receive the payment as AUD. Really looking forward to the option of avoiding multiple currency conversions.
literallycancer 7y ago
Can you get an EU subsidiary or something like a TransferWise account where you can receive any currency? Not sure how well it interacts with Stripe but it should work.
m11a 7y ago
> 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.
- ttoinou 7y ago
  A UK company costs < £100/yr to maintain Accounting included ?
  - m11a 7y ago
    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.
- dx034 7y ago
  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.
clement911 7y ago
As a Stripe customer incorporated in Australia, I have the exact same feedback. Not being able to get paid out in USD and incurring double FX costs is real problem.
tallytarik 7y ago
Absolutely agree with #1. I've had a similar experience - I run a business with Stripe, also in Australia. We charge in USD because we serve primarily US customers. I pay for the business expenses in USD. I've opened a US/USD bank account with Transferwise. But I can't use it with Stripe [1]. Their only choice is to have them convert our USD earnings to AUD and pay out to an AUD bank account. So when I pay those business expenses, I'm either: a) paying on an Australian debit or credit card, which charge us another 3% for every international transaction (3% seems to be the standard rate across all of our banks here), or b) carefully managing our cash flow to transfer AUD to our Transferwise account, use TW to exchange to USD, and then pay with our TW card. We did (a) for a while, now trying (b), but I'd love to see (c): Stripe pays our USD earnings to our USD bank account. [1] Funnily/strangely enough, I can actually ADD the USD bank account to our Stripe account. It just sits there, lonely, with a 0.00 USD balance. It took reading through the docs to realise that USD payouts are not supported for Australian Stripe accounts.

pc 7y ago

Great feedback... thank you. In case it's useful, some context on them: On (1), we started an FX team this year. (There are a lot of legal complexities here around how the funds move, who has title to what at which moment, and so on.) But we're investing significantly in improving it and it should get better soon. On (2), the core issue is card network pricing rules -- by design, they discriminate on the basis of where the business is located. We happily extend EU fees to all EU legal entities, however, and would be happy to work with you to set that up. On (3), refunds aren't free for Stripe, and we were previously in a position where businesses with a lot of refunds were being subsidized by those who didn't. We want to give this margin away more sensibly. Still, all the issues you bring up are real and I'd like us to find better solutions.

trevor-e 7y ago
Just want to say thanks for being so transparent with your answers in this thread, really appreciated. As a fly on the wall to most of this -- I don't have a business myself, yet ;) -- I'm learning a lot so far.
- m11a 7y ago
  Ditto. I don't know how he finds the time, and always touches his email in to make himself available to customers. It's customer service done right and it's great to see.
econcon 7y ago
Isn't FX a done deal based on how TransferWise is able to do it. Maybe you guys can collaborate with them and make payouts in any currency possible atleast in countries where there are no Forex restrictions like Hong Kong.
- joering2 7y ago
  Please no. TransferWise is terrible at customer support and internet is full of horror stories of people founds being frozen. The are the new incarnation of good ole’ paypal. You will get your account frozen the moment you wire more than$1,500 as per my own experience with 3 different businesses giving them a chance. I hope Stripe which is amazing will never have anything to do with TransferFraud.
  - byefruit 7y ago
    Not affiliated with TransferWise in any way but just want to say that this is totally the opposite of my experience and that of pretty much everyone I know who uses TransferWise. We've moved hundreds of thousands of dollars through them over the last couple of years with no problems on their end (we've had problems with banks failing to transfer correctly though..)
    - joering2 7y ago
      Glad to know your experience.
    - candu 7y ago
      Also not affiliated with them, and have been very satisfied so far. OTOH, I'm in Canada, and I've only used them for personal transfers. I have no idea how they perform for businesses, nor do I know whether they work well for individuals in other countries.
    - kernelbugs 7y ago
      I've had the same (mostly) great experience with them. My only issues with TransferWise have been having to ask recipients for their full addresses and then manually having to translate address schemes into something that fits in the boxes TransferWise provides in their forms. Sometimes things don't map over 1-to-1 (some Japanese and Taiwanese addresses, for example). I've also found that some Japanese banks only have one branch without a name and Transferwise requires a branch name. I eventually figured things out by researching the branch number online though. All minor gripes though. Transferwise has let my business operate smoothly and make connections to vendors that would otherwise be cost-prohibitive to pay.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
plantain 7y ago
>(3), refunds aren't free for Stripe, and we were previously in a position where businesses with a lot of refunds were being subsidized by those who didn't. We want to give this margin away more sensibly. I understand they're not free, but I also understand Stripe does get a considerable portion back that they are no longer passing on? Couldn't this just have been applied to the problematic businesses then rather than all?
- pc 7y ago
  It varies based on the card type, country, and other things. We could expose all of that more directly but the trade-off there is obviously pricing complexity, which we'd like to avoid. In our analysis in making this change, we saw that this simply makes little difference for the vast majority of businesses. For example, if you're processing $100k/year and refund 5% of your payments (which would be on the high end of normal), it works out to about $12/month. While refund rate of course is not definitively coupled to the quality of a business, we do see across our portfolio that it is strongly correlated. Given a basket of possible fees (for example, higher fees on Amex, which most other providers have), we prefer the fees that, on the margin, are least consequential for the businesses that are doing the best job of serving their customers. Having said all of that, none of our pricing is cast in stone, and we always genuinely appreciate feedback, including contrary views.
  - infinitelurker 7y ago
    Are those fees also present for transactions that are refunded immediately before they batch (i.e. testing). Let's say a stripe IP wasn't whitelisted on the server and started being denied coming back, causing transactions to fail. If I want to do a quick live environment test on this it now costs my client money, which is not ideal.
    - adambyrtek 7y ago
      You can do that using Stripe test environment and test cards without any fees. Refunds can take over a week to get processed by some banks, so testing on live data doesn't sound like a great idea. But even if you have to do a couple of live transactions I don't see how the cost of refunds could be significant.
sealthedeal 7y ago
You should consider chatting with us @routefusion :) developer.routefusion.co we will solve all of those nasty FX problems your customers are having. Already doing it for a few other e-comm platforms that link into Stripe.
BartBoch 7y ago
A solution, it seems, might be to allow users to get free refunds for up to 5% transactions in current month. Anything above that is paid. This way regular members are not penalized by big refunders...

rasz 7y ago

Those arent issues, they are the reasons for the valuation.

tarr11 7y ago

Completely agree on #3. Felt like a big blow to have Stripe do this. A lot of subscription based businesses were built around "no-hassle refunds" as a core feature enabled by Stripe and will now need to rethink this.

preinheimer 7y ago
This is the position we're in (our 'legacy' pricing will go away this year). We've decided to just eat it.
adrr 7y ago
Stripe isn’t being transparent on refunds. The issuing bank returns interchange on a refund. The true cost to stipe is a fraction of a penny to put the request on to the network. Other processors will refund interchange, this is unique to stripe. I am sure stripe is refunding interchange for their larger merchants that are on interchange plus billing. There is no way target is eating interchange on refunds. They are squeezing their smaller merchants for more money.
- rapind 7y ago
  This is actually what prompted us to start looking at interchange plus processors, plus the issue that our negotiated deal in Canada (where we're based) doesn't apply to our US clients. We went with Stripe for "simple" pricing knowing there were better deals out there, but it's no longer that simple for us at least.

alharith 7y ago

4) It's just way too expensive, in general, nowadays. Stripe's market leader position should allow it to negotiate lower fees, but for some reason doesn't seem to be part of the business plan.

sauravt 7y ago

Hi, I couldn't agree more with your concerns. I am working on a solution to solve this. Please reach out to me via email on my profile. Thanks

Cu3PO42 7y ago

German checking in. One of the reasons why it’s hard to get us to use a CC is that many of us don’t have credit cards. And why would we? (Except for online payments and other fringe cases.) However, Stripe offers SEPA direct debit, which is usable with any European bank account and may work better for you. EDIT: This seems to have sparked some confusion. I'm not saying Germans don't do card payments, I was only speaking of credit cards. We do all have and use debit cards, however, those are of a national scheme with wonderfully low fees, but no online usability.

adambyrtek 7y ago
I used to live in Poland (so just across the border from Germany) and now I'm a UK resident, and your question is really baffling, since in both of these countries people use (contactless) card payments for pretty much everything. Germany is definitely an outlier and your comment doesn't really explain why. Is this a cultural thing, regulatory issue, or maybe banks colluding to protect their interests?
- antonkm 7y ago
  Swede here. Really baffling for me too. My kids have pretty much never even seen cash. I use the nationwide app Swish to send money to people using their phone number (almost every Swede is connected since it's pushed by all big banks) and only use contactless credit card. How come Germany is so cash positive? Personally I think Sweden has gone a bit far, where some old people have been put in a weird spot where they can't pay because they're technologically illiterate.
  - mssngrtrn 7y ago
    Another German. We use "cards" all the time. But these are just cashless and tied to our SEPA accounts (so not a credit card).
    - thesimon 7y ago
      >But these are just cashless and tied to our SEPA accounts (so not a credit card). which wouldn't be a problem for shopping online if they had a Visa or MasterCard cobrand, as these can be debit and tied to your bank account as well. It's only slowly changing with some Sparkassen issuing MasterCard debit cobranded cards in late fall (https://www.f-i.de/News/ITmagazin/Archiv/2020/Einfach-mobil-handeln/Loesungen-Praxis/Eine-Karte-ueberall-einsetzbar https://www.f-i.de/News/ITmagazin/Archiv/2020/Einfach-mobil-...)

pc86 7y ago

How is it arbitrary that you get charged a rate for a service based on where you are?

rdslw 7y ago

ad3: I think it's the opposite youre saying. As a customer I can always use chargeback if you have any 'friction' about fulfilling my refund. chargeback works with my bank, no matter what stripe or vendor thinks.

eknam 7y ago

https://www.adyen.com/ https://www.adyen.com/

anthony_barker 7y ago

we are working on a blockchain based card processing solution which depends on your volumes. Ping me

sophiesak 7y ago

Hi there! I'm a product manager on our payment methods team at Stripe. We're working on a beta to bring EU payment methods to Australian-domiciled customers. They're both cheaper than cards, and have significant conversion uplift. Mind emailing me at sophies@stripe.com?

PixelPaul 7y ago

I agree with all this and it may be the reason I leave stripe soon. I deal a lot in USD as an Australian company but stripe won’t allow us to charge in USD and settle into our USD bank accounts. But others will. Also the refund issue is crazy, no other provider we use does it.

adambyrtek 7y ago
IANAL, but couldn't you incorporate a wholly-owned US subsidiary using something like Stripe Atlas to handle USD payments and reduce your fees? By the way, my company has the opposite problem. Our Stripe account is registered in the UK and even though we process payments for Australian customers in AUD their local banks still charge them an extortionate "foreign transaction fee". This means that we had to open a separate Stripe account registered in Australia just to avoid that.
- PixelPaul 7y ago
  i dont want to open a US business just to process US payments. the cost and time would be to high. and taxes. did you open a australian stripe account without an australian business?
  - adambyrtek 7y ago
    We had to incorporate in Australia anyway, so I guess you're in a different situation.

dalanmiller 7y ago

Hey there - would love to have a chat with you about some of the issues you're facing and make sure we're tracking accordingly. Care flicking me an email at dalan@stripe.com or DMing @StripeAustralia?

brongondwana 7y ago

Here to second this. We have a USD account in Australia and can receive USD payments directly as USD from Pin, but from Stripe we have to receive the payment as AUD. Really looking forward to the option of avoiding multiple currency conversions.

literallycancer 7y ago

Can you get an EU subsidiary or something like a TransferWise account where you can receive any currency? Not sure how well it interacts with Stripe but it should work.

m11a 7y ago

> 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.

ttoinou 7y ago
A UK company costs < £100/yr to maintain Accounting included ?
- m11a 7y ago
  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.
dx034 7y ago
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.

clement911 7y ago

As a Stripe customer incorporated in Australia, I have the exact same feedback. Not being able to get paid out in USD and incurring double FX costs is real problem.

tallytarik 7y ago

Absolutely agree with #1. I've had a similar experience - I run a business with Stripe, also in Australia. We charge in USD because we serve primarily US customers. I pay for the business expenses in USD. I've opened a US/USD bank account with Transferwise. But I can't use it with Stripe [1]. Their only choice is to have them convert our USD earnings to AUD and pay out to an AUD bank account. So when I pay those business expenses, I'm either: a) paying on an Australian debit or credit card, which charge us another 3% for every international transaction (3% seems to be the standard rate across all of our banks here), or b) carefully managing our cash flow to transfer AUD to our Transferwise account, use TW to exchange to USD, and then pay with our TW card. We did (a) for a while, now trying (b), but I'd love to see (c): Stripe pays our USD earnings to our USD bank account. [1] Funnily/strangely enough, I can actually ADD the USD bank account to our Stripe account. It just sits there, lonely, with a 0.00 USD balance. It took reading through the docs to realise that USD payouts are not supported for Australian Stripe accounts.