Most US banks are still operating in the 1960s. Everything needs to happen in person in a branch, or possibly for the more forward thinking ones, by mail. No email, no phone. Period. (Yes, you can call them on the phone, but you can't actually do anything.)
That means that you will have a severely painful experience opening a business account from overseas. I know this because I've done it, and it involved forwarding mail through a proxy in the US. As in, all mail from the bank went to a US address, where it was forwarded to me. Then I sent it either directly to the bank or back to my proxy in the US.
It hurt.
Every step of the way, they'll lose track of what they were doing and get small things wrong, which means you'll need to restart the process several times.
The only advice I can give is to avoid Chase at all costs. They used an entire month of my life before demonstrating that they were simply incapable of opening a bank account remotely. Key were a lot better, though still pretty painful.
I don't think this is 1960s mentality, it's just new rules introduced post 9/11. Before that, it cost something like $50, and now it can be in the range of several $1K. Can you document your experience further?
Most US banks are still operating in the 1960s. Everything needs to happen in person in a branch, or possibly for the more forward thinking ones, by mail. No email, no phone. Period. (Yes, you can call them on the phone, but you can't actually do anything.)
That means that you will have a severely painful experience opening a business account from overseas. I know this because I've done it, and it involved forwarding mail through a proxy in the US. As in, all mail from the bank went to a US address, where it was forwarded to me. Then I sent it either directly to the bank or back to my proxy in the US.
It hurt.
Every step of the way, they'll lose track of what they were doing and get small things wrong, which means you'll need to restart the process several times.
The only advice I can give is to avoid Chase at all costs. They used an entire month of my life before demonstrating that they were simply incapable of opening a bank account remotely. Key were a lot better, though still pretty painful.