Bank Accounts

Starting a new business can be challenging, but often it is the areas that you are not expecting to have problems with that cause the most issues. Opening a bank account is one of these areas. It is hard to believe how hard doing something as commonplace as this actually is. Other bank accounts that I have are actually with a credit union, which works really well, but one area that they do not really support is some of the advanced functionality that a business dealing with international trade may need.

So, it was off to a local bank to get an account opened. Or more correctly, it was off to the web site of the local bank to apply for the account. I found out later that this was probably the worst thing that I could have done – you see, opening a bank account online does not really save any work. It does not appear to reduce the need to visit a branch in most cases either, and is considered by branch staff a generally bad idea.

It is those unexpected issues that cause real problems. One of the Redshift Wireless directors is presently out of the country, and despite a total lack of documentation indicating this, the bank actually requires that each director presents themselves to the bank to do an identity check. The simple way to fix that in this case was for that director to resign for the duration of the opening of the bank account. This is just an indication of some of the issues we have had opening an account.