Register Shopify Payments on a different company?

[Dry-Ager]

Hello,

we're in the process of setting up Shopify Payments on our store. We are based in Germany but have registered our shop to our US based subsidiary as we want to sell our products to the US and Canadian market only. Our problem is that we are still waiting for the EIN number of our subsidiary which we need to setup Shopify Payments. Because we don't exactly know how long it will take to get this number we are planning to setup Shopify Payments for another subsidiary (general partner) of our company which is also based in the US. From this general partner we already have a valid EIN number.

Now my question is if it is possible to register Shopify Payments to a different company than the company which is our Shopify shop registered to?

Best regards,
Benjamin

[Nick]

Hi @Dry-Ager,

Nick here from Shopify. Great question!

I can definitely see why you would want to hurry the process up on this and get things going, but my advice would be to wait for the EIN number here. There are a couple of reasons for this. The first being the tax implications. Something else is that Shopify Payments accounts are not transferable between different people and companies which is in our Terms of Service. The other thing to remember is you would not be able to use Shopify Payments Germany and have your currency be USD, it must be Euro to avail of Shopify Payments from Germany. 

It might not be what you want to hear right now, but my advice would be to wait as the problems of going the other route and registering Shopify Payments to another company could end up costing you more time in the long run while also making things more complicated.

You can see the requirements for Shopify Payments in all the countries they are available in here. You would need to have all the requirements to make it available in the US for you also, not just the EIN number. 

I hope this helps and don't hesitate to ask any other questions about this should you have any. 

All the best, Nick

[Dry-Ager]

Hi @Nick ,

thank you for your detailed answer! I have talked to my colleague and we decided to register Shopify Payments temporarily to another company because we are runing out of time before our business starts at the beginning of August. We are still waiting for the EIN number of our new US company and don't know how long it will last to receive this number. Because of that, we have no other alternative than setting up Shopify Payments for our other company from which we already have a valid EIN.

I assume that this can't be done with the regular payment setup page on Shopify backend because we don't have a US SSN number. We have read your docs and got the information that you need the following documents for the pament setup with a German passport:

- copy of the German passport
- EIN number of the company we want to associate with the payments
- Business Registration document of the US company
- confirmation that the company works from inside of the US
- confirmation that the company has a bank account inside the USA

Can you please confirm that this are the documents you need for setup? On which email address must we send this documents? And how long does it take to complete this process and offer Shopify Payments to our customers?

Thanks in advance!

[Dry-Ager]

Can someone give me an answer for my questions? Sorry for pushing this thread, but we are running out of time and want to setup Shopify Payments at the end of July...

[Nick]

Hi @Dry-Ager,

I completely understand your situation, but would still advise you to wait for the EIN number to arrive as it’s not advisable to try and operate under another companies' details and the terms of service state Shopify Payments accounts are not transferable. 

We also can't guarantee the documents you mentioned are the only ones we will ask for. They are the basic ones, but there could be more - depending on how detailed the Risk team wants to get when doing their review. There would then be a secure document upload link to start accepting the documentation we need and asking you questions about your US operations. After we’ve verified you have valid US tax information, we then send the case to the Risk team again for a second review. I can't give an exact timeline on how long this could take. 

I wanted to set the expectations for you before you decided to commit to it as you wouldn't be able to simply swap your Shopify Payments back or to another company once you go this direction. If you would like to go this route, I would reach out to you directly via email to start the process. I will say, my advice is to wait for the other EIN number, but let me know what you want to do and we can take it from there.

[Dry-Ager]

Hi @Nick ,

thank you for your answer! Today we have received the EIN of our LP company which is associated to our Shopify shop. So it is not necessary anymore to setup Shopify Payments to a different company.

But I guess the procedure for applicants outside of the US is nearly the same regarding the requested documents. Can you please contact me on my email address and provide me the link for the upload form to submit these documents to you?
Thank you in advance!

[Dry-Ager]

Sorry for the hurry, but maybe you can give us some feedback regarding this?

Best regards.

[Nick]

Hi @Dry-Ager,

Apologies for the delay in getting back to you. I was out of the office. I have sent you a direct email about this on the email you signed up to the community with. If for any reason you didn't get an email, please let me know here. 

[Dry-Ager]

Hi Nick,

thank you for your reply. In the meantime I have talked with  a colleague from you in the support chat and he told me that he will send us a link to the upload form for sending the neccessary documents to you. Unfortunatelly we are waiting for the link since 3 days now. He told us that the link will be visible in the backend of Shopify and that we will receive an email once the link is set.

Best regards,
Benjamin

[Dry-Ager]

Hi @Nick ,

we are waiting for the payment link since about 5 days now and nothing happend! We have talked to the support chat several times and they always promised us that they will setup the upload form for us and nothing happens! This is really verry frustrating for us! We spend many weeks in setting up our Shopify shop and coding, installing and configuring several apps etc. And now when we are nearly ready to start our business we can't go further because of the inacceptable behavior of your support team! Sorry for talking this way, but we are very angry about this! It can't be your business to ignore customer requests on this way. Every member of your team we have talked to since weeks now told us that we will see the upload link within the next hours but absolutely nothing happened!
We really think about changing our store to a software from another company if this problem can't be solved from you. We can't be the only company in the world which wants to setup Shopify Payments from a different country than the shop is registered to!
So we are waiting for an immediate response of your team to finally solve this issue!

Best regards,
Benjamin

[Nick]

Hi @Dry-Ager,

This is in the hands of the right team regarding your ticket. I completely understand you wanting to get this dealt with as soon as possible. Something like this can take up to 5 days, but I did let the team know and have increased the priority on the ticket for you.