The Four Gates: What Providers Actually Check

Read down the last column. A company is a fix for the first row and nothing else. Founders spend money on a Wyoming LLC expecting it to solve row three, and row three does not move.

Stripe says it plainly, and the sentence is narrower than the internet thinks:

"Registered businesses must be registered in the US, even if you operate in another country"

"Unregistered businesses must have a business owner or representative physically located in the US"

Stripe, Requirements for having a US Stripe account.

Two sentences, two different gates. The first is an entity test and your LLC passes it. The second is a residence test and it is scoped to unregistered businesses, which yours is not. People read the second sentence, assume it applies to them, and conclude Stripe is closed. It isn't.

Shopify does the same thing:

"Individuals and Sole Proprietorships are required to live in the United States"

Shopify, Bank account and personal information requirements.

Individuals and sole proprietorships. Not LLCs. The business type you pick at signup decides which sentence lands on you, which is why that dropdown is the highest-stakes field in the whole process.

Etsy is the clearest case because the shop's country follows the payout account rather than the seller. Etsy Payments is available in a fixed set of locations, and if your banking is not in one of them the shop cannot open there.

There's a wrinkle worth knowing. Sixteen of the listed countries reach Etsy Payments through Payoneer rather than a local bank:

"Sellers in countries with * next to their names can accept Etsy Payments with a Payoneer Payment Account."

Etsy, Countries Eligible for Etsy Payments.

Pakistan, Brazil, Egypt, India, Ukraine and the UAE are on that starred list. So for a seller in those countries the operative question is not "will a bank take me" but "will Payoneer".

Mercury tests where you sleep at night:

"we're unable to open accounts for founders living in any of the countries and regions listed below."

Mercury, Prohibited countries.

Relay tests residence or citizenship, and tests it against every owner rather than the applicant:

"Relay cannot open a Relay Account for any business owner who holds citizenship or residency in one of the following countries"

"The restriction applies to any business owner named on the Relay Account application, including beneficial owners."

Relay, Prohibited Countries. Last updated August 11, 2026. Relay's second sentence catches people out. A co-founder on the application whose residence is on the list closes the account for the whole company, and it does not matter that the business is a Delaware LLC with a US address.

This is the distinction almost every guide flattens, and Mercury itself does not. Mercury publishes its restrictions under two separate headings.

Sanctioned countries and regions, three countries plus one region group: Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and the Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine including Crimea, Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia. These are legal obligations. No bank can serve you and none will.

Prohibited countries, 48 of them, hand-counted from Mercury's page. This is institutional risk policy. It includes Nigeria, Pakistan, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Bangladesh and Nepal. It also includes Croatia and Latvia, both EU member states, and Albania.

That last sentence should change how you read the list. It is not a developing-markets list and describing it as one is wrong. It is a list of places where one company's compliance team decided the cost of diligence exceeded the value of the account. A different institution can and does reach a different answer about the same country.

Relay publishes one undifferentiated list of 31 countries with no such split. We are not going to invent the split on Relay's behalf.

One provider, one case. Upwork:

"Businesses or individuals in the following regions and countries are not permitted to register for accounts or utilize our platform:"

Iran; North Korea; Crimea, region of Ukraine; Cuba; Individual nationals of Cuba; Luhansk People's Republic (LPR); Donetsk People's Republic (DPR); "Any other country or region restricted by law (this changes occasionally)"

Upwork, Who's eligible to join and use Upwork?.

"Individual nationals of Cuba" is the only citizenship test found across every provider examined for this index. It follows the person regardless of where they live, and it is sanctions-driven rather than a risk decision.

Note the first two words: "Businesses or individuals." A US LLC does not cure a restricted-country presence on Upwork. Incorporating around this gate does not work, and Upwork says so.

If a provider you need applies an entity gate, forming a US company is the fix and it will work.

If the provider applies a residence gate, forming a US company changes nothing about your application, and money spent on a Wyoming filing in the hope that it will move Mercury is money spent on the wrong problem. Find the institution whose list you are not on.

If it applies a citizenship gate, nothing you can buy changes the answer.

Will a Wyoming LLC get me a Mercury account? No. Mercury's test is where the founder lives, and forming a company in another state does not change where you live. If your country of residence is on their list, the application fails for that reason whatever the entity looks like.

My co-founder lives in a restricted country but I don't. Does that matter? For Relay, yes. Its restriction "applies to any business owner named on the Relay Account application, including beneficial owners." One owner on the list is enough.

Does Stripe require me to live in the US? Not for a registered business. That sentence is scoped to unregistered businesses. Your registered LLC has to be registered in the US, which it is. The requirement that catches people is the separate one about the physical location where most of your business activity happens.

Can I sell on Etsy from a country where I can't open a US bank account? Often yes, and this is why the gates matter. Etsy lists Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Pakistan, Ukraine and Latvia as eligible for Etsy Payments. Mercury's institutional list blocks founders living in all six. Selling and banking are separate questions with separate answers.

Which gate does PayPal apply? Residence, on the published evidence we have, but we have not verified PayPal's User Agreement clauses first-hand as of September 1, 2026, so this row is marked unverified in the index rather than asserted here.