You have a high-risk passport.
If you’re from MENA, CIS, Latin America, Africa, or South Asia – and you’ve already been told “we can’t open an account for you” – this page is for you.
Roman Verzin · Founder
USG was born out of necessity – built by partners who run their own businesses across China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Central and South-East Asia. After 2022, every bank I went to said no – not because our business was problematic, but because of where I’m from. Every consultant told us the same thing: “Opening an account for someone like you is impossible. Figure it out yourself.”
We found that almost all providers serve clients who need standard setup – Western passports, straightforward corporate histories. That’s the easy path. Real business is rarely that simple, and our clients have none of that. We solved our own problems first. Now we help founders facing the same barriers.
Read Roman’s story →Real cases
Founders who were in the same position
Anonymised – names removed, industries and regions kept.
LatAm trader · from three refusals to two open accounts
European-passport founders in LatAm-connected minerals trade. Their Hong Kong company had an account closed in 2025 after the corporate-secretary network turned out to host a sanctioned entity at the same address, and three later bank applications were refused. Ownership sat 50/50 between two founders with high-risk birthplaces, and the registered address still pointed to a high-risk country even though both had lived in Europe for years.
A profile audit found the real reasons the bank had acted on. We consolidated ownership to the single founder and updated the director’s address to his European country of residence, then moved the registered office to a clean provider. From there we rebuilt the application from scratch and matched the case to several banks based in Hong Kong and mainland China.
Two banks moved the founders to onboarding. Three weeks to fix the profile, three weeks to prepare for the trip to China and open the accounts in person.
Tier-3 founder · a contractor filed the company at a loss instead of offshore
A founder from a Tier-3 country came to us after his Hong Kong company’s first year had already been filed by a China-based contractor. The contractor had taken the standard local shortcut – booking the company at a loss so the tax came to zero – instead of claiming Hong Kong’s offshore exemption, the proper route for a business whose operations all sat outside Hong Kong. The offshore route takes more work and more knowledge of the rules; the loss was simply the easier thing to file.
We took the company over onto our own infrastructure – our registered address and our corporate secretary – so the file was clean and consistent. The following year we did it properly. We prepared the full offshore-exemption package and the evidence that the business operates entirely outside Hong Kong, then filed the claim on grounds the IRD could accept.
The company went from a paper loss that no one could call a sustainable business to a proper offshore-exemption filing built on real substance.
Eastern European trader · non-resident accounts in several jurisdictions
A trader from Eastern Europe with a multi-region business needed a Hong Kong company whose corporate documents would be accepted by banks in third jurisdictions – so they could run local business across several countries in Central Asia and Europe. That meant preparing an extended document package, agreed with the banks in advance and apostilled in Hong Kong.
Registered the company, agreed with each bank on the document package they would accept to open an account, ran the apostille chain end-to-end, managed the annual review, and kept the document bundle ready for each new bank or counterparty that asked.
Because the document package was pre-cleared with each bank, the founder opened non-resident accounts across several countries without a single application bouncing back for missing or wrong paperwork.
Common questions
What founders ask before they call
If yours isn’t here – book a call, we’ll talk through your situation directly.
Will my passport always be a problem?
Yes and no. The friction reduces over time: after the first couple of years of clean banking history, transparent tax filings, transaction patterns that match your declared business, and growing presence in your industry – you essentially move almost a tier higher (see the passport-tier matrix →). If you run the business properly, life gets easier, and you can focus more on the product than on solving structural problems.
But there are limits. If you hold a Libyan, Russian, Lebanese, or other high-risk passport, the current banking system will never treat you the same as a European. That is something you can only accept and find practical ways around.
How to start working with you?
A 30-minute call. You explain your situation – which country you’re from, what you’re trying to do, and other relevant details we need to be aware of. We tell you about the solutions that exist today and fit your specific case. If we’re not the right fit, we’ll tell you so.
What if you take the case and can’t fix it?
We don’t promise outcomes we aren’t confident about. But sometimes we propose a path and tell you openly that the result isn’t fully in our hands. If you decide to go ahead and the outcome doesn’t land, as a rule we refund our margin and keep only the cost of delivery.
When we’re wrong – or when something happens through our fault – we carry the full consequences. Our approach is long-term: we work with you for the relationship.
Do I need a co-founder or nominee owner with a different passport?
Not always. If you have a partner you trust – someone who participates in the business and holds a position – then yes, having them as a co-founder with a lower-barrier passport will make life easier.
A nominee owner is a grey area. It exists as a practice, but it creates its own problems and risks. We believe it causes more issues than it solves. Feel free to check our video on this topic.
Tell us your situation.
Free 30-minute call. You explain what you need – we tell you what is realistic and what it costs. And if we are not the right fit, we will say so.
Book a free 30-minute call →Or write to us first: business@usg.world