Anyone who has opened more than one business account knows the moment when the same certificate leaves the folder for the third time. You scan it and upload it again. Then the next bank wants almost the same paper in a slightly different shape, with a new upload button, a new file limit and a new name for it, on a form you’ve never seen before. It wears founders down faster than anything.
Between us we have spent about twenty years opening company accounts, nearly 10,000 of them, and the paperwork has barely changed in that time. That is why we started BankStore. For this guide we went back through the document rules on the Bank Index cards we researched in September 2026. We wanted to see where banks split. We marked the ones that ask for originals.
What a bank wants your documents to prove
A bank’s document list can look long and random, but every paper on it answers one of a few plain questions about your company. Is the company real and registered? Who owns it and who runs it? Where will the money come from and go?
Company papers answer the first of those questions. Personal papers of owners answer the second. A short business story covers the third. That story can lean on invoices, signed contracts, a note about your last funding round or anything else that shows what the money is for and how it reaches you in your first year of trading.
The details change from one bank to the next and from one country to another, but the logic underneath them stays much the same. So build your pack around those questions. A pack built around one bank’s checklist has to be rebuilt for the next bank, and you lose the time you hoped to save.
Company papers every bank asks for
Every bank starts with the papers that show your company was formed and still exists today in good standing with the state. In the US that means the formation certificate, the operating agreement or bylaws and the IRS letter that confirms your EIN. In Europe it’s a fresh register extract. Ask for a freshly dated copy.
The KeyBank card shows what a plain American list looks like in practice, and it is shorter than you might expect. It asks for “a Social Security number or EIN, formation papers, two forms of identification and the minimum opening deposit” at a branch. Note the branch visit in that list. Associated Bank adds “documents verifying business registration and authority”, and that last word deserves a closer look before you apply anywhere.
Authority here means proof that you’re allowed to act for the company, such as signing contracts or opening accounts in its name. For an LLC, that’s the operating agreement. Reviewers do read this part closely. If the agreement is silent on who signs, a short resolution signed by the members fills the gap, and banks tend to ask for it the moment they notice the gap in your file during review.
Offshore and free zone companies face a longer list than most, and the extra items are the hardest ones to produce from abroad. The Mashreq card says “Offshore firms supply a certificate of good standing”. It adds that “original share certificates are required for free zone, offshore and non-resident owners”. So that means paper originals, not scans. We doubt most founders see it coming.
Personal papers for owners and directors
The second pile of papers is about the owners and managers of the company, and it grows with every new owner or director. Each one proves identity and address. For most banks that means a passport or national ID card and a recent proof of home address in their own name.
Some banks want two separate IDs per person. KeyBank asks for two forms of identification, and the Westpac card says “New customers with two or more signatories must complete ID and document checks in a branch”. Check the rule for every signer.
Proof of address trips people up more than anything else on the list, mostly because of how old the paper is allowed to be.
Many banks want bills under three months old. Many refuse a phone bill or a screenshot. Keep two fresh options ready for each person.
The business story and where your money comes from
The third part is the one founders tend to skip until a bank sends a written question about it during the review. Banks want to know what you sell. They also want the countries you trade with, the clients who pay you and the money you expect to move each month, written in plain words a reviewer can check against your invoices later on. Our own startup page lists “Source of funds and recent funding-round details” as part of the startup file for that reason.
Source of funds weighs more at some banks than at others, and one crypto bank on our list spells that out in plain words. The Xapo Bank card says it “reviews entities case by case with source of funds documents”, along with a fee paid up front. For a young startup that probably means the round announcement, the investment agreement or bank statements that show the money arriving.
Write the business story once and keep it short. Half a page is enough for most banks. Reuse it word for word everywhere you apply.
Certified copies, originals and translations
Plain scans work for most online banks, though traditional banks often want something a little more formal than a scan from you. A notary, lawyer or bank signs certified copies. It costs a little, so plan for it. Ask the bank which kind it accepts.
The rules on certification vary a lot from country to country, and they’re easy to miss when you skim a bank’s help page. Standard Bank in South Africa lets owners abroad sign a non-resident business account application with “documents certified by a bank in an FATF country”. DBS in Singapore runs a separate track for foreign-owned firms, “with certified documents and a relationship manager”, instead of its instant path.
Some banks go further still and want the paper itself in their hands, so a scan alone won’t get you through. The RBC card says “Directors need certified ID and a branch visit to verify identity”, even when the company itself is owned from abroad. The Deutsche Bank card cites a 2026 guide noting that “traditional German banks may require physical original documents” from foreign founders. Foreign-language papers may need sworn translation. Anyway, back to what most banks accept.
From no papers at all to full originals
The gap between providers on paperwork is far wider than the bank websites make it look when you first start comparing them. We compared them card by card. At one end sits Hong Kong’s ZA Bank. Its card says “The business application runs fully online with no meeting or document submission”, and that sounds almost too easy.
The catch sits in the eligibility rules: all owners and directors must carry a Hong Kong ID and be tax residents of Hong Kong only, so it’s an option for very few founders abroad in practice.
At the other end of the range sit the banks that still want you in an office, holding the paper in person. The Dollar Bank card tells applicants to “schedule an appointment and bring documents to an office”, and it shows no online application. Most fintechs sit somewhere in between. They take scans and check IDs in-app.
Capital One sits nearer the middle of that range. Its card says small-business accounts “can be opened online or with a representative, with an EIN and formation documents”, a short and welcome list. That is about as plain as it gets.
Papers for a company that is still being formed
Some countries ask for a bank paper before the company can even be registered, and that flips the usual order on its head. There you pay in share capital first. The bank then confirms the deposit, and the registry uses that confirmation to finish forming the company you are setting up.
The Bank Frick card puts a price on that step. Its card says “A confirmation of capital deposit for a company being founded costs 0.1% of the founding capital, at least CHF 250 and at most CHF 1,000”. Qonto runs the same step online. Its certificate arrives within 12 business hours, so the papers needed to open the account and the papers needed to form the company end up in one flow for you instead of two separate ones.
Why the same papers go out again and again
The documents needed to open a business bank account hardly change between banks, even across borders, once you strip away the local names. What changes every time is the format. Each bank runs its own portal, its own upload rules and its own names for the same paper, so the job starts over at every bank even when your pack is identical to the last one.
Banks can’t hand your file to each other either. Each one keeps its own records and answers to its own regulator, so a pack you already gave somebody else doesn’t count for them. We find that more tiring than is reasonable. We have watched it happen for years.
Freshness adds yet another loop to the process. A March utility bill is stale by July. So a founder who opens accounts a few months apart often collects new personal papers each time, for every owner and director.
How to build one pack and keep it current
The fix is boring and it works well: keep one folder for the company and keep it current, month after month. Put every paper and the story in it. Keep it in one shared drive. Name every file the same way each time, with the issue date in the file name, so you can see at a glance what is about to expire before the next bank asks for it.
Keep certified copies of your formation papers and the latest register extract in that folder, with a note of when each was issued. Add passports and two address proofs. Replace address proofs every three months. Sending stale ones is bad advice, in our view.
Check that every paper agrees with every other one. Names, share splits and addresses should match across the operating agreement, the register extract and the chart you attach to each form. A mismatch costs more than a gap.
How BankStore takes the repetition out
We built our unified KYB profile to hold that folder in one place, so you stop rebuilding it for every new bank. The product page describes the whole idea as a way to “Capture your company once in the shape compliance teams need”. You enter the company, the owners, the activity and the papers once, and every later application draws from that same record. That record stays yours to update.
Then comes the application itself, bank by bank, starting from our bank list. Our guided onboarding turns each bank’s list into a single checklist, so you can see which item is still open at which bank. The page explains that “Every provider requirement becomes an item with a declared answer type”, such as a file or a short text answer. Nothing is sent until you approve it.
What even a perfect pack can’t fix
A complete pack won’t change a bank’s risk rules or its appetite for your industry, your country or your type of company. A tidy folder won’t move a refusal. Some banks will still ask for one extra paper that only they need, and we don’t know a way to predict which.
Paper originals are another limit we can’t remove for you. If a bank wants physical share certificates or a branch visit, no upload in any online portal replaces that, ours included. We’d rather say that plainly up front.
Where document checks are heading
We expect more banks to move toward online ID checks and scans, as ZA Bank, Qonto and the fintechs already have. Traditional banks will probably keep originals. It is only a guess on our part.
For a founder we think the sensible move is to treat the pack as a living company record, updated after every funding round, new director and change of address, so the next application starts from a full folder. One thing still remains unclear, though. Several providers we checked publish no document list at all, and nobody we found publishes which proofs of address they turn down.