In cooperation with Estonia's e-Residency program, international payments company Paymentwall on Monday launched Passport, a new service with which entrepreneurs worldwide will be able to digitally establish an EU company and access payment and other supporting services.

Source: https://news.err.ee/612952/estonia-s-e-residency-program-launches-partnership-with-paymentwall

"We are delighted to be part of this groundbreaking initiative from Paymentwall," e-Residency Managing Director Kaspar Korjus said according to a press release. "The business world does not have any shortage of ideas or talent, but financial barriers are still holding people back from their entrepreneurial potential — often just because of their location. E-Residency is aiming to democratize entrepreneurship globally by offering location-independent company management, and Paymentwall Passport will help contribute to our shared goal of digital and financial inclusion worldwide."

"Estonia's e-Residency program was established to enable entrepreneurs from around the world to establish and run a global EU company entirely online," said Oleg Gutsol, head of Global Growth at e-Residency. "Now, with Passport, the process of setting up an EU company and connecting the payment processing solutions will become even easier."

According to Gutsol, Passport will be especially useful for entrepreneurs in countries such as Ukraine, Turkey and India, where strong growth has already been seen but global payment solutions are not as readily available.

Passport has created a global network of companies to help founders find a working space, get localization services, access business banking, register for a company in Estonia, an EU member country, and start accepting payments all in one platform. The network currently consists of over 100 companies and institutions, including Estonia's e-Residency program, the Estonian Centre of Registers and Information Systems (RIK), Paymentwall, Holvi, Terminal3 and Altagram.

"Starting a business should be a simple and streamlined process anywhere in the world," said Paymentwall CEO Honor Gunday. "We built Paymentwall Passport in order to remove the barriers that prevented entrepreneurs in emerging markets from pursuing the most innovative ideas and to help them incorporate in the EU."

Payment services for small and large companies alike

Paymentwall allows a total of five billion people worldwide to make payments using credit cards as well as 150 local payment options all over the world. The international payments company currently already helps over 200,000 merchants to accept international payments, including SEGA, LG Electronics, Bandai Namco, Shopify, Kakao Games, Kigo, Wargaming, Tencent and Gameforge.

Estonia is the first country in the world to offer e-residency, a transnational government-issued digital identity for which anyone can apply and which can be used to open a company within one day and run it remotely, apply for a business banking account and payment card, conduct e-banking, use international payment service providers, declare taxes and sign documents digitally.

Thus far, more than 22,000 people from 138 countries have applied for Estonian e-residency; together they manage more than 3,000 companies.

Editor: Aili Vahtla