Hi everyone, let me describe my situation and the 6 months long merchant acquiring process I am into.
We are an IT Consultancy firm based in Pakistan, have been using Paypal since a few years but now looking to expand and need a merchant account. First we registered a company here and opened a corporate bank account. Approached a few merchant providers but none of them were willing to work with a Pakistani company.
Than we registered an offshore company in Dubai and applied for merchant account through that, faced the same problem however one of the merchant provider suggested that they will open an offshore company in UK for us and will get merchant account though that, we agreed and a company in UK was formed last month. None of these offshore companies have corporate bank accounts.
The merchant account is still in process and almost 6 months are gone trying various solutions. I found this community last week while searching on Google and read some really good things here.
Acquiring a merchant account as a Pakistani is damn difficult and we still don't know if we will get one or not, we do have access to some merchant accounts owned by other people, who let us charge our sales for a percentage, but in this process we have to share of profits which we don't want to do and need to have our own merchant account.
To get corporate bank accounts in Dubai for offshore company you need to maintain minimum amount per month, which is a lot and for a small company like us is not possible. In UK we can't open a corporate bank account as none of the shareholders are UK resident. Barclays require a deposit of 25k GBP to open a corporate bank account without going there which is also a lot of money.
Keeping all this in the mind can you guys suggest how we can get a merchant account without losing more money. Currently the merchant account in process is from Rietumu Banka based in Latvia, they don't need corporate bank account in EU or UK, they will send the settlements to our Pakistani company bank account, which is yet to happen. We don't know how much more time they need to setup.
Thank you.
We are an IT Consultancy firm based in Pakistan, have been using Paypal since a few years but now looking to expand and need a merchant account. First we registered a company here and opened a corporate bank account. Approached a few merchant providers but none of them were willing to work with a Pakistani company.
Than we registered an offshore company in Dubai and applied for merchant account through that, faced the same problem however one of the merchant provider suggested that they will open an offshore company in UK for us and will get merchant account though that, we agreed and a company in UK was formed last month. None of these offshore companies have corporate bank accounts.
The merchant account is still in process and almost 6 months are gone trying various solutions. I found this community last week while searching on Google and read some really good things here.
Acquiring a merchant account as a Pakistani is damn difficult and we still don't know if we will get one or not, we do have access to some merchant accounts owned by other people, who let us charge our sales for a percentage, but in this process we have to share of profits which we don't want to do and need to have our own merchant account.
To get corporate bank accounts in Dubai for offshore company you need to maintain minimum amount per month, which is a lot and for a small company like us is not possible. In UK we can't open a corporate bank account as none of the shareholders are UK resident. Barclays require a deposit of 25k GBP to open a corporate bank account without going there which is also a lot of money.
Keeping all this in the mind can you guys suggest how we can get a merchant account without losing more money. Currently the merchant account in process is from Rietumu Banka based in Latvia, they don't need corporate bank account in EU or UK, they will send the settlements to our Pakistani company bank account, which is yet to happen. We don't know how much more time they need to setup.
Thank you.
