Credits for founders without a US entity

The major cloud programs are open worldwide and ask for a registered company, not an American one. What is usually closed is anything touching US banking, payment rails or equity: corporate cards, several fintech perks, some accelerators. Incorporate for customers, not for credits.

Almost every list of startup credits is written from inside the United States and quietly assumes a Delaware C-corp, a US bank account and an EIN. That assumption is wrong for most of the world, and it is also wrong about which programs are genuinely restricted, because it never distinguishes the ones that cannot serve you from the ones nobody bothered to check.

The honest split is that compute and tooling are broadly open, and money infrastructure is not. Knowing which side a program falls on before you spend an evening on its form is most of what this page is for.

The order to do this in

  1. 1

    Register the company you actually operate through

    Nearly every program needs an entity to contract with, and in the large majority of cases it does not need to be American. A local limited company with a site on its own domain clears the requirement that stops most first applications, and it is far cheaper to maintain than a foreign one.

  2. 2

    Take the cloud programs first, they are the least restricted

    AWS Activate, Google for Startups Cloud, Microsoft Founders Hub, DigitalOcean Hatch and the IBM program all operate across most of the world. What they screen on is company age, funding stage and whether you hold a paid account, not your jurisdiction. Read the country field on each program page rather than assuming either way.

  3. 3

    Get a business email on your own domain before you apply

    Google requires the application email, the public website domain and the billing account domain to match, and reviewers elsewhere read a free webmail address as evidence that there is no company behind the form. This is the cheapest rejection you will ever avoid.

  4. 4

    Expect the money programs to decline, and read why

    US business banking, corporate cards, several merchant-of-record startup deals and a number of accelerator cohorts require a specific jurisdiction because their sponsor is a licensed institution. That is a regulatory constraint rather than a preference, so there is no appeal worth writing and no workaround worth attempting.

  5. 5

    Treat incorporation as a sales decision, not a credits decision

    A US entity costs money to create and more to keep: a registered agent, franchise tax, an annual filing and usually a US accountant. The case for it is enterprise customers who will not sign with a foreign supplier, or investors who will only buy Delaware paper. The extra credits alone almost never repay it.

  6. 6

    If you do incorporate, claim the entity-linked programs that same week

    Incorporation bundles such as Stripe Atlas ship a partner perks package, and several banking, card and payments programs only open once the entity exists. Doing them together means one round of document gathering instead of five, while the formation paperwork is still on your desk.

Programs to start with

86 in the catalog. These are the ones worth your first hour.

Which of these do you clear?

Five questions against the real eligibility rules.

Check eligibility

Common questions

No. Both run in most countries and evaluate company age, funding and account status rather than jurisdiction. What they do want is a registered company with a website on its own domain, and a local entity satisfies that exactly as well as a US one does.

Mostly the ones touching regulated money: US business banking, corporate cards, some payment programs, and accelerators that invest on US paper. Each program page lists the countries it accepts, and where a provider has published no restriction we say so rather than inventing one.

Rarely on its own. It creates a real company with real annual obligations, and the perks bundle does not cover those. It earns its cost when a customer or an investor requires a US entity, and the additional programs are then a bonus rather than the reason.

Keep reading

Credits for AI startupsCredits for SaaS startupsCredits for pre-seed and bootstrapped foundersCredits for fintech startupsCredits and programs for climate startupsCredits for bootstrapped foundersStartup credits in PakistanStartup credits in the United Arab EmiratesStartup credits in India

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