Google Play for a Foreign-Owned LLC: Organization Accounts

For a United States payments profile, Google publishes the accepted identity documents by account type.

Individual account. Passport, state identification, driving license, permanent resident card or green card, and all of them must be a United States government-issued photo ID.

Organization account, authorized representative. The same document types, and:

"The government-issued photo ID can be issued in any country"

Google, Google Play Developer Verification: Required documents by country and region.

If you hold a Nigerian, Indian or Pakistani passport and no US identification, the individual path is closed to you and the organization path is open. That is the whole page in two sentences.

This is a detail worth knowing before you go looking. Google's accepted-document list is not one page. It is a page per country, selected by your payments-profile location, reached by a country parameter on the same article.

So the answer to "what ID does Google Play accept" depends on which country's payments profile the account sits under, and quoting the generic requirements page will not give you it. The quotes above are from the United States page.

If your payments profile is under a different country, read that country's page rather than assuming.

Organizations supply two things: identity documents for the authorized representative, and registration documents for the organization itself.

Google accepts, among others, "any document, notice, or letter either issued by the IRS or stamped by the IRS that states your Organization name," or a "Certificate of Business Incorporation issued by the state where you conduct business activities."

Your EIN confirmation letter, the CP 575, satisfies the first. That is the same document your bank wants, which is a rare case of one artifact clearing two gates. Your state formation certificate satisfies the second.

"Assigned to organizations by Dun & Bradstreet, a D-U-N-S number is a unique nine-digit identifier that is widely used to verify businesses."

Google, Required information to create a Play Console developer account.

Organization accounts require one, with limited exceptions for known government organizations. Where Dun & Bradstreet does not operate, an alternative verification route can be requested from support, and it is offered only to organizations genuinely unable to obtain a number.

Free, and a few days to a couple of weeks. Request it before you start.

The account type is not a label. It routes you to a verification path.

Choosing Individual because the app is small, or because the form is shorter, walks into a document requirement you cannot satisfy. The shorter form is shorter because it is collecting information about an entity that does not exist.

Google publishes one table covering both, and the gap between its two columns is the whole story for a founder outside the wealthy world.

We counted the live table rather than trusting a summary. 214 locations are listed. All 214 support developer registration. 163 support merchant registration. 51 do not.

That last number is the one that matters. In 51 locations you can build, publish and distribute an app, and you cannot get paid for it. Among them: Morocco, Georgia, Nepal, Iraq, Ethiopia, Kyrgyzstan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Kosovo, Senegal, Cameroon, Rwanda, Sudan, South Sudan, Tajikistan and Timor-Leste.

This is the clearest case on the whole site for why a US entity is a real solution rather than an optimisation. A developer in Morocco is not being asked to pay more or wait longer. They are outside the merchant table entirely. A US LLC with a US bank account moves them into it, because the merchant registration follows the entity rather than the person.

Google's own framing of the table:

Use the following table for reference when registering as a Google Play developer and merchant.

One dated warning. The organization verification page carries a "Changes are coming to this article" notice with an effective date of September 30, 2026. We have not seen the changed text. If you are enrolling an organization after that date, read the page rather than this one.

Google publishes no last-updated date on either page, so our September 1, 2026 retrieval date is the only date attached to these quotes.

Merchant availability is a separate question from developer account eligibility. Which countries you can sell to follows the payments-profile location and has its own rules, which we have not verified. Nothing on this page speaks to it, and any merchant exclusion list you see elsewhere should be treated as a partial sample unless it is sourced.

We have not verified the alternative verification route's criteria beyond Google's statement that it is for organizations unable to obtain a D-U-N-S number.

Can I open a Google Play developer account without US identification? Yes, through an organization account. Google requires a United States government-issued photo ID for individual accounts, and accepts a photo ID issued in any country from an organization's authorized representative.

I already registered as an individual. What now? You are on the path that requires US identification. Check whether the account type can be changed in Play Console, because the alternative is a new account and a new payments profile.

Do I need a D-U-N-S number? For an organization account, yes, with narrow exceptions. It is free and takes a few days to a couple of weeks. Where Dun & Bradstreet does not operate you can ask support for an alternative route.

What counts as an organization registration document? An IRS-issued or IRS-stamped document naming your organization, or a certificate of incorporation from your state. Your EIN confirmation letter satisfies the first.

Does this mean I can sell my app everywhere? No. Merchant availability follows the payments-profile location and is a separate question we have not verified here.

If your country is one of the 51 that supports developer registration and not merchant registration, the US entity is not an optimization. It is the mechanism.

The entity is the easy part. What follows it is the sequence that actually takes time: an EIN with no SSN, then a US bank account, then a payments profile that has somewhere to send money.

Check your country against the banking providers before you form anything. Google Play's merchant table and Mercury's prohibited list are different lists and a country can be on the wrong side of either. Both are in the Compatibility Index.

The D-U-N-S requirement is shared with Apple, so if you are shipping to both stores, get the number once. See Apple Developer for a foreign-owned US LLC.