Stripe Rejected Your Non-US-Owned LLC: The Actual Reasons

"All businesses must provide the address of the physical location where the majority of your business activity is carried out (PO Boxes are not accepted)"

Stripe, Requirements for having a US Stripe account.

Founders form a US LLC, buy a registered agent and a virtual mailbox, and enter that address because it is the American one. Stripe asked a different question. It wants the place where the work happens, which is your desk, wherever that is.

The failure is subtle because the address is real and does belong to your company. It just is not the answer to the question asked. PO boxes are excluded outright, and several cheap US address products are effectively PO boxes.

The fix: put your actual working address in the physical-location field, even though it is not in the United States. The entity stays American; the desk does not. Stripe contemplates this directly:

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

Same source.

The second most common, and it usually shows up as a loop rather than a refusal: upload a document, wait, get asked again.

Causes worth checking. The name on your passport not matching the name on the formation documents, including middle names and transliterations. A document photograph that crops the machine-readable zone. A representative listed who is not actually an owner or officer. An address on the identity document that contradicts the address you entered.

The fix: make the four names agree, which means the formation documents, the EIN letter, the passport and the Stripe representative record. Where they cannot agree because of a legal name change or a transliteration difference, say so in the support thread rather than hoping the mismatch is not noticed.

Stripe publishes a restricted-businesses list, and some categories are refused outright while others are permitted with conditions or require review.

This one is not about you being foreign at all, and it is worth checking before you conclude your nationality caused the rejection.

The fix, where one exists: describe the business accurately and narrowly. Broad self-descriptions that sound like a restricted category get treated as one. If the category is genuinely prohibited, no appeal changes that and continuing to apply wastes weeks.

This is the one everybody assumes and it does not apply to a registered LLC. Stripe's residency requirement is scoped to unregistered businesses. If you have an LLC, you are covered by the registration sentence, which you satisfy.

If you applied as an individual or an unregistered business, the residency rule did apply to you, and the fix is the business type rather than the appeal.

Keep it to four things and no more.

State what you are: a registered US LLC, with the state and formation date.

State the entity facts: EIN, registered agent, and that the company is registered in the US.

State the address correction explicitly: that the physical location where the majority of business activity is carried out is your working address abroad, and that the previous entry was your registered agent's address, given in error.

State what you sell, narrowly and in plain terms.

Do not argue about eligibility rules, do not attach a wall of documents nobody asked for, and do not open a second account while the first is under review. Duplicate accounts are a distinct problem that is harder to unwind than the original rejection.

Say it plainly to yourself early. If the business category is prohibited, that is final. If you applied as an unregistered business from a country Stripe does not support and you have no entity, forming one changes the analysis; continuing to appeal without one does not.

Where Stripe stays closed, Shopify Payments is the realistic alternative for a storefront, and its own requirements sit on the bank account rather than the address.

Stripe says I need to be in the US. I'm not. Is that the reason? Probably not, if you have a registered LLC. That requirement is scoped to unregistered businesses. Check the address you gave first.

Should I give my registered agent's address? No. Stripe asks for the physical location where the majority of your business activity is carried out. Your registered agent's office is not that, and PO boxes are excluded.

Won't a foreign address look worse? It is what the field asks for, and Stripe states that registered US businesses qualify even when operating in another country.

How long should I wait before appealing? Until you can name the cause. An appeal that guesses tends to confirm the wrong problem and closes the thread.

Can I open a second account? No. Duplicate accounts during review create a separate problem that is harder to resolve than the rejection.