I'm from and working on a project in India, and I'd like to start charging for my products. Unfortunately, payment processing here is absolute rot. Not even Paypal operates effectively in this country, leave alone Braintree or Stripe.
So I'm looking to set up an LLC in the US. I know it's been done before by the likes of Freshdesk, but the more research I do the move I'm convinced it would make more sense to have some kind of presence there. Stripe seems to want details of actual US citizens to activate accounts, and I'm sure banking will be much easier that way too.
What would be the best way to structure a company like this? Can I get an 'agent' or lawyer in the US who would own and run the company for me, create the necessary accounts, file tax returns, etc? Is this a good idea at all?
More on payment processing options if you decide to do it from India till you build traction: http://blog.chargebee.com/payment-integration-options-for-st... Disclaimer: I am one of the founders of ChargeBee.
There are pros & cons of running company in two countries with administration & documentation being a big overhead. And initial cost runs to $1.5 or 2k with dual setup etc.,
Instead you can focus on getting product right get started with a gateway that works (unless monthly variable billing is non-negotiable to your business model).
One of the use cases we are trying to address is this using partnership with 2Checkout (2CO). 2CO has its limitations and we have built a beautiful wrapper on top to address most scenarios in recurring billing.
You may check our API documentation here: https://apidocs.chargebee.com/docs/api
(inspired by docco used by Stripe. We built ours ground up as auto-generated documentation with the notes doubling up documentation for our code).
As you build traction for your product you can setup company in US and we can help you switch over to any US payment gateway seamlessly with multiple gateway support (we are adding more gateways globally).
BTW, we are on boarding beta customers and would love to chat if you have more questions. My id in profile.