Frequently asked questions

Sometimes Dubai is the right answer, and we say so even though we don’t open UAE companies. Choose Dubai when your business is purely MENA trade with no China side: accounts usually open regardless of passport, and for a founder based in the region the flights are short and Arabic-language banking is available.

Choose Hong Kong when China is in the picture – you source or manufacture there, or trade through it. The practical reason is how Chinese banks treat your money: payments from Hong Kong are routine for them, while money arriving from Dubai draws extra questions before it is accepted. Transfers take longer, and your suppliers feel that difference too. A Hong Kong company with a Chinese bank account removes much of that friction.

The banking trade-off matters more than the tax one. Dubai accounts are easier to open but harder to operate: one of our clients reports a large share of payments going into extra compliance checks, and Dubai banks expect real presence in the UAE. Hong Kong banking is harder to enter – especially with a difficult passport, which is our speciality – and more predictable once established. If you need both China access and MENA operations, a Hong Kong company for the China trade alongside a Dubai entity for MENA is a legitimate structure.

Choose the USA when you are raising US venture capital (Delaware is the standard investors expect) or selling mainly into the US market – especially if you build on advertising platforms that work better with US entities.

Choose Hong Kong when the business runs through China and Asia. Chinese suppliers and banks know how to work with Hong Kong companies. Hong Kong also has no VAT and no tax on dividends or capital gains, while the US brings federal plus state tax complexity.

We don’t open US companies. If the US is the right answer for your business, we tell you so and refer you to a partner we trust.

That depends on what you are doing and at what volume. A Hong Kong company can buy from Chinese suppliers as a foreign purchaser – the supplier handles the export side. This works well while the trade structure is straightforward and your Chinese counterparty can do export efficiently.

A mainland entity becomes necessary when your Chinese supplier or customer requires a local company on the contract, or when VAT refunds on exports become large enough to pay for the office and the staff the tax bureau requires. We help you work out which structure fits before you commit – the full picture is on the expanding-to-China page.

Banks rank passports by country risk. The hardest look goes to passports from countries under sanctions or in a conflict that has stopped normal banking. Some banks treat a high-risk place of birth the same way, whatever the passport. The jurisdiction still follows the business – where your suppliers and your contracts live. What the passport changes is the banking path: which institutions will look at your file, and how much preparation the application needs.

A founder with a high-risk passport can hold a Hong Kong, Singapore or mainland China company. The work is in building a file a bank can say yes to, and that preparation is most of what we do. The per-jurisdiction banking reality, including the per-passport breakdowns, is on the banking pages, and who we help shows the founder profiles we work with most.

The range is wide, and turns mostly on your passport and how clean the file is. Licensed fintech accounts are the fastest route: typically 5–10 business days from application to first transaction. Traditional banks are slower and vary by market: count one to three months to a working Hong Kong account, while a simple Singapore file can be approved in days and the account follows from there. Where a bank accepts a difficult profile at all, it takes longer still. A Chinese WFOE account typically takes 2–4 weeks from scope call to active RMB and FX accounts.

The full timeline windows, broken down by passport profile, are on the banking pages for Hong Kong, China and Singapore.

Yes, within limits. In Hong Kong and Singapore the path runs through selective licensed institutions and, for traditional banks, an introducer (an existing client or partner the bank already knows) plus a heavier preparation file. In China, some regional banks accept these profiles when the file comes in through a relationship channel; top-tier banks sometimes accept too, with domestic-only restrictions.

Roman holds a Russian passport and has been through these conversations for his own companies, so when we say a path exists, it is because we have walked it ourselves.

The limit: with a high-risk passport, the banking system will not treat you the same as a European founder. The friction reduces after a couple of years of clean banking history, but some level of it stays for as long as you hold the passport.

Yes – this is one of the most common situations we take over. A rejection is information: something in the file read as risk to that particular bank. We work out what the bank saw and fix what can be fixed. Then the corrected file goes to an institution whose risk appetite matches your profile.

Can we guarantee the next application opens? We can promise to find a legal banking solution. Depending on your profile it may cost more or start with fewer features, but a workable setup almost always exists, and we tell you up front what yours realistically looks like. The full breakdown of why applications get rejected is on the dedicated page.

Four things carry most of the weight:

• Passport and place of birth. A second passport lowers the risk a bank sees, but if it shows a high-risk place of birth, the risk level does not drop all the way.
• The story against the documents. The declared business has to match what the documents and the account history show. Any gap between the story and the paper kills trust.
• Source of funds. Where the money started and whether the trail can be verified.
• History. A previous closure with a clear explanation is workable; several closures with no explanation narrow the field fast.

Most of our preparation work is making sure these four look clean before any bank sees the file. The longer version – how bank compliance thinks, and how to live with it after the account opens – is in our guide to Hong Kong banking compliance.

Money that is held or under review is almost never lost. A stuck payment is sitting somewhere along the route it was sent on; the first job is to find where and why. Most cases end with the money released or returned, so it can be sent a better way.

A frozen account is usually the bank asking a question in the loudest way available to it. Answer fast, with documents that match your account history, and in most cases the hold comes off – banks read silence as something to hide.

Two pages cover these situations in detail: account frozen and payments stuck. The practical insurance is the same for both: never run the business on a single account.

Hong Kong: 5–10 business days from submission of complete documents.

Singapore: 7–10 business days start to finish. ACRA processes the filing itself in 1–3 business days; the nominee-director arrangement and the KYC preparation take most of the time. (Singapore law requires one resident director; a licensed provider fills the role. That statutory nominee takes no part in opening your bank account; a bank-attending nominee is arranged separately when a traditional bank asks for one.)

Mainland China: 20–40 business days, depending on the city. If the shareholder is a foreign company rather than a person, add several weeks for document legalisation in the home country. The path from registration to a fully operational entity – bank account, import-export registrations – is on the expanding-to-China page.

A registered address is mandatory in all three jurisdictions; a physical office mostly is not.

In Hong Kong and Singapore, a registered address through a licensed provider is standard practice for non-licensed businesses. It handles government correspondence and is sufficient for opening a fintech account. Most major banks, and any business that needs a financial licence, will want a real office lease – on the first call we tell you whether your case needs one.

In China, a WFOE can be registered at a virtual office, but that limits banking options and won’t qualify for VAT export refunds later. Common practice: start with a virtual or incubator-space office, then switch to a physical one once operations grow.

Yes – handovers are routine. We start with a review of where the work stands – the latest financial statements and the document discipline – and check for open items with the tax office or the auditor. Where useful, we talk to your existing provider directly.

If prior years have gaps that affect what comes next, we tell you what they are before we charge for anything. You decide what to clean up and what to leave. Most takeovers settle into a normal service cycle after one to two months of overlap.

In Hong Kong and Singapore – relatively straightforward. Director changes are filed with the registry and are completed within days, remotely. Hong Kong share transfers carry stamp duty of 0.2% of the value transferred and take one to two weeks.

In China the same change is a different scale. An equity transfer starts with a shareholder or board resolution, followed by the tax filing on the transfer gain. Then comes the regulator’s equity-change registration, and finally the company’s foreign-exchange registration is updated at its bank. It takes eight to fourteen weeks start to finish; most of that time goes to the tax and bank steps.

If the ownership change is driven by a conflict or a risk problem rather than housekeeping, that is its own territory – covered on the ownership restructuring page.

Yes. Every Hong Kong company files audited financial statements annually – there is no small-company exemption. Singapore, by contrast, exempts small companies.

For a small company with clean records it is a routine annual step, and we coordinate the whole cycle with the licensed CPA, so you deal with one team. One planning note: if you intend to claim offshore tax status, the auditor reviews 100% of invoices rather than the usual 10–30% sample, so the document discipline needs to be thorough from the first month.

Hong Kong: profits tax at 8.25% on the first HKD 2M of profit and 16.5% above that. No VAT, and no tax on dividends or capital gains. If profits are sourced outside Hong Kong, an offshore claim can bring the rate to zero – but even a classic trading company with a clear evidence base has a first-year approval chance of around 60–70%, and for digital or service businesses it is lower, so we never sell it as automatic.

China: corporate income tax at 25%, plus VAT at a rate set by the activity. The real burden depends on what the WFOE does and where.

Singapore: corporate income tax at 17%, with exemptions that lower the effective rate on the first SGD 200K of profit. Under the start-up exemption it comes to about 6.4% for the first three Years of Assessment, and after that the partial exemption brings it to about 8.3%. The start-up exemption applies only if the company is Singapore tax-resident, is not an investment holding or property development company, and has no more than 20 shareholders. Either all of them must be individuals, or at least one individual must hold 10% or more of the shares.

The tax page covers each jurisdiction in depth, including what the offshore claim takes.

In Hong Kong the annual-return late-filing fee starts at HKD 870 and rises the longer the filing is late; a late Business Registration renewal brings its own penalty, and a bank will not open an account for a company whose Business Registration certificate has expired. Singapore moves from a late fee to a summons if the filing stays ignored. China is the sharpest: missing the annual report deadline puts the company on the Abnormal Operations List, which banks treat as a freeze trigger.

Our job is to make this question theoretical. Every deadline goes on our calendar the day the company is incorporated, and the filing work starts weeks before the window closes.

We work with what you have. Where a receipt is missing but the bank statement shows the payment, we can usually reconstruct enough context to categorise it – with a note on what is documented and what isn’t. For small undocumented amounts there is a last-resort option of reclassifying them as advances to the director until settled. It works, but it is not a substitute for proper records.

From then on, we give you templates and a monthly folder structure that shows what to keep, so the gap doesn’t repeat. One warning: gaps that don’t matter for a standard Hong Kong filing can disqualify an offshore claim, where every invoice is reviewed. Tell us early which path you’re on.

Sanctions evasion and illegal goods, obviously. Beyond that: any scheme whose purpose is to hide who really owns or controls the business. We also decline small one-off paperwork requests with no relationship behind them.

The reason is practical as much as ethical. Our value is banking that stays open, and banks stay open for clients whose files are clean. Taking a grey case would put every other client’s infrastructure at risk.

Pricing is tiered by scope and by your company’s size. The right tier depends on what we learn on the first call: jurisdiction, which services you need, your turnover, and how complex the banking path is.

On the call we agree the scope together, and we share the full breakdown for your specific case privately, before any commitment. We don’t publish price lists because a number without the context of your case anchors the wrong expectation – in both directions.

A free 30-minute call. You explain which country you’re from and what you’re trying to build. We tell you which solutions exist today for your specific case – and if we’re not the right fit, we say so on the call.

Once you confirm, we begin. We have staff across time zones and work with you on messenger, so you’ll find us close to always reachable.

We don’t promise outcomes we aren’t confident about. Sometimes we propose a path and tell you that the result isn’t fully under our control – no one can guarantee, for example, that the Hong Kong tax office approves an offshore claim.

If you decide to go ahead and the result is negative, what we refund depends on the service: for some we return the fee in full; for others we tell you in advance which part of the fee can’t be returned. When something goes wrong on our side, we fix it.

Our approach is long-term: we work with you for the relationship.