Getting paid in dollars and euros with a US LLC when you live abroad

My own US companies, BENNU EDGE LLC and Unicorn Payments LLC (both New Mexico LLCs), are run from outside the United States. So the situation of a founder with an American LLC, clients in several countries and a life split between two or three cities is not foreign to me. What I do see is how a conversation that should be simple goes wrong: everyone says “I need a dollar account” and almost nobody says which part is missing.

My practical advice is to separate three questions before asking anyone for anything.

1. Who invoices?

The LLC, under its exact legal name as it appears in its formation documents. It sounds obvious, but it is the detail that has to match on the invoice, in the client contract, on any verification form and in the beneficiary name the payer will see. If the trade name differs from the legal name, the invoice should explain the relationship before the client has to ask.

2. How does the client pay?

This is the question that depends on the client, not on you. In Bennu’s rails guide we describe the main map like this: SEPA for the euro, SWIFT for international dollars, and ACH or wire as extra coverage where supported. A European client paying in euros does not need to understand SWIFT; one paying in dollars from outside the United States probably will. How long it takes and which details are needed change with the rail, the sending bank and compliance checks.

Collecting in the client’s currency can make reconciliation simpler, because what they send and what you receive look more alike. There is a trade-off: if you later need another currency, conversion has a cost, and it is better to see the rate before confirming than on a statement.

3. Who verifies the company?

Whoever provides the collection service, with its own criteria. It may ask for more documents, accept the file or reject it. No checklist guarantees approval, but there is a way of preparing the file that avoids most of the misunderstandings I see.

The first rule is not to mix addresses. The LLC’s registered address, the place where the work is actually done and the owner’s home address are three different things, and each belongs in its own field. A registered office, an agent’s address or a commercial mailbox does not, on its own, say where the person lives or where the business operates. Swapping one address for another so the form “fits” is the fastest way to create a doubt that was not there before.

The second is to explain what the company sells and to whom, in concrete words and with current evidence: contracts, invoices, the website. And to keep what you have already collected apart from what you expect to collect. A forecast presented as history is worse than having no history.

Bennu publishes a checklist for preparing the KYB file of a cross-border business and another text on preparing collection routes for an online business in Dubai. The team wrote them, not me, but they capture what I find most useful.

A virtual account is not your own bank account

There is a nuance worth having clear before you share payment instructions with a client. In Bennu’s guide to virtual accounts versus bank accounts we put it this way: a virtual account is usually a routing layer that a banking or payment partner provides to identify transfers for a specific customer. It is not automatically a direct banking relationship.

In practice that means two things. First, the beneficiary name and the details shown should be confirmed in the provider’s offer before they go to anyone. Second, if what the client sees when paying does not match the invoice, you will get a phone call, and rightly so. I wrote about this in Before asking a client to change how they pay.

What this article does not solve

It does not cover tax. How an LLC is taxed when its owner lives outside the United States depends on its structure, the countries involved and the activity, and a qualified adviser should review it. Nor does it decide eligibility: whether a route exists for a given company and country is confirmed by the provider, case by case.

Bennu is self-custody technology, not a bank; fiat and payment services are provided by third parties identified in each flow, and access is by invitation after a review. If it fits, you can request access. Requesting it does not imply approval or guarantee availability.

I write as a co-founder of Bennu: the sources are Bennu’s public pages, which describe the product as we offer it. This text is informational and is not legal, tax, regulatory or financial advice.

Sources

• Bennu: SEPA, SWIFT, ACH, wire and PIX.
• Bennu: virtual accounts versus bank accounts.
• Bennu: KYB checklist for cross-border businesses.
• Bennu: an online business in Dubai and its collection routes.