Starting an EU business with high rewards cards as a non-resident.

[DagNabItAll]

Hi, I currently have a UK company, but reside in Asia. I'm starting a new business that will have exclusively EU sales, and will be spending a lot on adverts. I'm looking for the best place to start a company within the EU, where I will be able to put the adspend on Amex or another high rewards card, without being a resident of that country. Anyone have any suggestions as to where is good currently? Estonia, Cyprus, Malta?

 

[TurnedToRobot]

You may setup a company either in the UK, Cyprus or Malta, all three will work just fine for you. In regards to banking there are not many banks left which will allow you to open an account remote.

 

[DagNabItAll]

I've got a UK company already, the different currency causes me to pay a lot of extra fees to Paypal, where most of my customers will pay. Plus while I have a few bank accounts, I can't get any decent rewards cards.

 

[TurnedToRobot]

Sorry for the stupid question but why is it a requirement for you to have a rewards card?

 

[DagNabItAll]

A ton of our revenue is spent on advertisements. So the 2-3% back we would get from something like Amex has a large effect on our take home, even if it's in the form of travel and stuff.

 

[Larry]

A ton of our revenue is spent on advertisements. So the 2-3% back we would get from something like Amex has a large effect on our take home, even if it's in the form of travel and stuff.

I feel you that's why I'm using a AMEX Business Gold card with Membership Reward Program for my E-Commerce Business. With 25-30k Adspent per month and the collected points this is a flight from Dubai to London every month and every 2nd month a business class flight from Dubai to new York. Cheers mate

 

[IntlOffshore]

A ton of our revenue is spent on advertisements. So the 2-3% back we would get from something like Amex has a large effect on our take home, even if it's in the form of travel and stuff.

I had a lot of experience with this in 2014-2016. The spending was in EU/UK but it wasn't with EU/UK based cards though, so I can't help much with directing you to a jurisdiction (aside from mentioning that BoC does issue AMEX cards, I personally never got one from them, so can't say much more).

Something that you didn't mention, though:
What currency and what country are you going to be charging in? It's definitely something to consider, because your 2% could easily be eaten up by currency conversion and foreign transaction fees as well - you'll need to do due diligence with each card if it's going to be cross borders. (if its cross currency, it's going to be extremely hard to pull off).

Something you may also want to consider if the entity/tax setup will allow it, is using personal cards for charging. I imagine that you'll find a lot more options offering rewards, however, it's possible depending on the volume and the bank issuing the card, that you they may have an issue with the business activity on a personal card.

I imagine (hope) that you're using a CSP of some sort for setting this new entity up....did they have recommendations?

 

[JohnLocke]

Bank of Cyprus issue Amex Cards I could upload a photo of mine here but won't do that However, it's not easy to get an account in Cyprus any longer, that said, I didn't say it is impossible.

 

[DagNabItAll]

Ah, I have news. I spoke to Amex and it appears after 2 years in operation, even without any residents in the UK, we can get access to Amex. It all sounds to good to be true, but in theory I can get multiple cards, one pounds, one euro's and one usd. I can also link each of them to PayPal, so I can use my EU paypal balance to pay off EU ads without paying any exchange fees, while collecting a large amount of rewards points. We will file our second year in around 6 weeks, so I should have an update in 2-3 months.

@IntlOffshore I haven't spoken to any agencies yet, I've had a lot of bad experiences with agencies previously and wanted to do a bunch of research before asking for their input. Currently we get most of our revenue in PayPal, and have split up our adspend by currency to roughly match our PayPal revenue by currency, so we don't need to withdraw often from Euro's to Pounds and get hit with a 2.5% charge (you can pay bills in the same currency without any exchange fees on PayPal, however they only let you withdraw in the currency of your accounts country).

@Admin While researching this I ran across some articles that says that Amex has stopped working with banks to issue cards in Europe, do to some new regulations, and that in the future Amex will be the only ones issuing their cards.

 

[JohnLocke]

I have had my card for years, maybe they are not going to renew the card once it expires, so I have my Visa Platin card as well

We will file our second year in around 6 weeks, so I should have an update in 2-3 months.

Sorry, what do you mean with that?

 

[DagNabItAll]

Ah, Amex will sign us up if we have 2 years of filed financial accounts, and we will file our second year of accounts in around 6 weeks.

 

[TurnedToRobot]

Sounds a little bit strange.. there must be other banks that can provide AMEX!

 

[Larry]

Sounds a little bit strange.. there must be other banks that can provide AMEX!

Yes there are other banks like I said before Swiss private banks without need of 2 years filed financial accounts. But you will have the best card conditions when you go directly with AMEX. If you go with bank that provide you with the AMEX card you pay the bank + AMEX. I think it depends on the age of your company which way you should go.