Currency Exchanges, Check Cashers, Foreign Currency Sellers - Look To Bitcoin Businesses For Advice

If you own a business which is a currency exchange, prepaid value card seller, foreign currency sellers, or other MSB activities you know how difficult it can be to find a MSB friendly bank or a bank who will accept as a client a money services business.

If you've already called around to all your local banks and still have not had any luck you'll then want to start looking out of state. This will be tough as most banks will only deal with people or businesses in their immediate footprint, meaning nearby them. This sometimes is not the case for check cashers as some of the check cashing services and technologies rolled out in the past few years has made this unnecessary. That said most other MSB's will find it difficult trying to find banks outside their geographical area.

Money Services Businesses May Want To Look To Bitcoin Business For Banking Advice

MSB business owners may want to look to Bitcoin businesses and how and where they are getting their banking relationhips. Until the recently small Bitcoin businesses were thriving. Most banks didn't even know what Bitcoins were. Bitcoins were not considered Money Transmitters, Bitcoin businesses were not considered to be money services businesses. Heck, most banks probably not only didn't even know what Bitcoins were, but if they did probably viewed them as some type of online novelty currency and wouldn't give a second thought to opening up a bank account for a Bitcoin business.

With all the media attention Bitcoin got, as well as recently being named as being a Money Transmission activity pretty much all banks have ceased conducting business with Bitcoin businesses. If you thought traditional MSB's or money services businesses had it rough, Bitcoin has it even harder.

If you want to start doing a bit of digging into what Bitcoin businesses are doing for their banking relationships simply do a Google search for "Bitcoin friendly banks thread", "bitcoin hostile banks thread", "bitcoin msb thread". I like to throw in thread at the tail end of all searches as it will typically bring up discussions and responses on forums where you will actually find this info, as opposed to not doing this you will more likely be pulling up Forbes articles talking about Bitcoin businesses but with vague info about banking. In the thread discussions on forums people will share first hand experience what banks have shut them down, which banks they have had luck with, etc. 

There is a lot of Bitcoin entrepreneurs and invididuals online discussing how and where they are developing banking relationships.

One tough thing about being an MSB is that there are not a lot of us out there. Probably in large part due to how difficult banks and the government make it to operate a business in this sphere. That means it's tough finding information and resources online. Bitcoin has been good in that it has spurred a lot of discussion online regarding where to get bank accounts for a MSB, and more specifically where to get an MSB bank account for a Bitcoin business.

As a traditional MSB owner you want to seek out this information. If a bank will give a bank account and is willing to work with a Bitcoin business it means they are very openminded towards MSB's and are likely to take your brick and mortar MSB business. It's probably safe to say Bitcoins are probably viewed as more high risk than say a check casher for example, so if a bank is willing to take on a Bitcoin business chances are they will take on your MSB.

Something you will probably find however is that many Bitcoin businesses are taking their businesses offshore and doing banking in offshore banks where they are more friendly towards Bitcoin and not as crazy about MSB's as here in the US. Countries which seem to be popular for Bitcoin busineses to bank in are Poland, Jersey, Slovenia, Seychelles, Malta, and even Italy.

It can be daunting trying to find an offshore bank. There are so many offshore incorporating services out there who charge high fees for what you could do yourself. Also, a good majority of these seem to have some complaints online with ripoff report type sites. Ever since the introduction of FACTA, most foreign banks are weary about dealing with US citizens and the few banks you will find oftentimes require a visit to a country like the Czech Republic for example.

Offshore banks may not be a bad route to go but you will definatley want to consult an attourney as well as an accountant before venturing into offshore banking for your MSB business.