Opening a Company in Serbia as a Pakistani Citizen

Two official sources, two different answers

Serbia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and one of Serbia's own embassies currently say different things about where a Pakistani national lodges a visa application. Both pages are official, both were live when we read them on 10 August 2026, and neither refers to the other.

The MFA page listing Serbian missions for Pakistan states that there is no resident Serbian representative office in Pakistan, and lists the Embassy in Tehran as covering Pakistan on a non-residential basis.

The Embassy of Serbia in Tehran published a notice dated 30 June 2025 stating that visa applications from nationals of Pakistan and Afghanistan will not be processed there until further notice, citing the regional situation and technical problems with the visa system. It refers Pakistani applicants to the Serbian Embassy in Beijing and gives a phone number and an email address for it.

Read carefully, the notice is a stop on processing rather than an announced change of jurisdiction. It sets no end date and no condition for resuming, and it names Beijing as a referral without stating that Beijing has been formally accredited for Pakistan. As of 10 August 2026 that notice is more than a year old with nothing appended to it. Still published is not the same as still accurate.

The practical result is that no official Serbian page currently states a usable route for a Pakistani applicant. Treat both sources as the starting point for a question you put to the mission directly, not as an instruction you can act on.

• MFA, Serbian embassies and consulates for Pakistan: no resident office in Pakistan, the Embassy in Tehran covers Pakistan non-residentially.
• Embassy of Serbia in Tehran, notice of 30 June 2025: applications from Pakistani nationals will not be processed in Tehran until further notice, with a referral to the Serbian Embassy in Beijing.
• Neither page acknowledges the other, and neither carries a correction or an update.
• The MFA visa regime page for Pakistan has no date stamp of any kind, so nobody can assert how current it is.
• The same MFA missions page also lists an honorary consulate in Karachi. Nothing on that page says it accepts or issues visas, so do not assume you can lodge a file there.
• Both source links are in the sources panel at the foot of this page. Open them yourself before you act on anything here.

What to do before you spend money

Confirm the route in writing before you buy a ticket, pay an application fee or commit to a start date in Serbia. An email that goes unanswered costs you nothing. A trip to a counter that will not take your file costs you the fare, the hotel and the calendar.

This is also the reason to be sceptical of anyone, agency or forum, who states the Pakistan route as a simple fact. If the ministry has not reconciled its own two pages, no intermediary can settle it for you either.

• Write to the mission named in whichever source you intend to rely on, and ask plainly whether it accepts visa applications from Pakistani nationals at this time.
• Ask for the answer in writing and keep it with the file, along with the date you received it.
• Do not book non-refundable travel and do not pay a visa fee on the strength of a page that carries no date.
• Re-check both sources shortly before you apply. An arrangement stated as until further notice can end or change without an announcement.
• Keep the company timeline and the visa timeline separate, so a consular delay does not stall the business.

Registering the company is a separate process, and it is not blocked

None of the consular uncertainty stops you from registering a Serbian company. Ownership does not depend on a visa, a residence permit or Serbian citizenship, and a foreign citizen can own the whole company.

The APR application is prepared and filed under a special power of attorney notarised in Pakistan and apostilled where required. The founder still travels to Serbia for the physical KES/QES and bank identification; cloud KES is not offered in our workflow. APR usually issues the registration decision within three to five business days once the application is in order.

The state fee is 2,500 dinars for a sole trader and 8,000 dinars for a d.o.o., and the minimum capital for a d.o.o. is 100 dinars. Most foreign founders choose a d.o.o., because the two forms differ in how you answer for debts.

After registration come the tax ID, the beneficial owner filing and monthly bookkeeping, which starts at 6,900 dinars a month for a sole trader and 18,500 dinars a month for a company. Flat-rate taxation is available up to 6,000,000 dinars of turnover in a calendar year, and you enter the VAT system once turnover in any 365 consecutive days passes 8,000,000 dinars.

One warning worth stating plainly. A company registered only to support an application, with no intention of trading, is not a route to a permit. The authorities assess the genuine purpose of the stay, and the accounting record either supports that purpose or contradicts it.

• Registration itself: passport of the founder, the director's details, a registered address in Serbia, the founding act and the registration application.
• If a Pakistani company is the founder rather than an individual, add a register extract and the constitutive documents with an apostille and a court interpreter's translation into Serbian.
• The bank account is the step that does not run purely on a power of attorney, because each bank sets its own identification rules. See the banking section below.

If the route is confirmed: the D visa on an employment basis

Serbia's single-permit page states that a foreign citizen who needs a visa to enter the country applies for a D visa on the grounds of employment. On the temporary residence page, self-employment appears as one of the closer reasons under the employment basis, handled through the combined residence and work permit.

Do not plan to arrive on a short visit and convert. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs states that a short-term visa is not grounds to apply for temporary residence unless the Law provides otherwise, and that a foreign national who needs a visa and intends to apply for temporary residence must obtain a long-term visa.

The D visa allows a stay of minimum 90 and maximum 180 days and permits multiple entries. The official pages give no rule for how the actual number of days is decided in a given case.

An application can be made through the online form on the government portal or in person at a diplomatic-consular mission of Serbia. You apply at the mission competent for your country of residence, or at a non-residential mission if there is none in your country. For Pakistan, that general rule is exactly the point in dispute, which is why the mission has to confirm it before you travel.

On timing, the D visa page asks applicants to apply at least three months before travel. That is a lead time it asks of you, not a commitment by the authorities to decide within three months. No processing or decision time is published for the D visa anywhere on these pages, so treat any figure you are quoted elsewhere as unsourced. The portal also posts notices when C and D visa submission is temporarily unavailable, so do not leave an online submission to the last day.

For the self-employment sub-ground the official D visa employment page lists the following document categories. Passport validity must run at least 90 days beyond your intended departure date.

• Completed visa application form, in the online application or printed if you apply at a mission.
• Valid passport.
• The applicant's photograph.
• Proof that the application fee has been paid.
• An invitation letter.
• The Serbian registration certificate of the company.
• An authorisation or power of attorney where a representative applies on your behalf.
• A landlord or accommodation statement.
• These are category labels read off the official page, not its exact legal wording, and the list changes materially if your sub-ground is employment under a contract or independent professional rather than self-employment. Check every line against the live page before you assemble the file.
• The page does not state whether documents need translation, apostille or notarisation, and it does not state the fee amount. Ask the mission.

After the visa: residence and work

The single permit combines residence and work authorisation in one permit. Serbia's own pages use several word orders for it, so there is no single official English name to quote.

A properly completed single-permit request is resolved within 15 days from the date it is submitted. The clock is tied to a properly completed request, so it is not a promise about the total time from your first attempt. Temporary residence or a single permit may be issued for up to three years per request. Three years is a maximum, and no criteria are published for who receives the full term.

Plan on continuing on the same basis your D visa was issued on. If you need to change basis, confirm that with the Ministry of Interior first, because the official portal is not consistent on this point and we will not state a rule the state has not settled.

One step cannot be done from abroad. The temporary residence page states that once the conditions for issuing the permit are met, the applicant must appear in person at the competent authority so biometric data can be collected. Build a trip to Serbia into the plan.

Extension requests are filed no earlier than three months before expiry and no later than the expiry date, and filing on time lets you remain in the country while the procedure runs. Missing that window is one of the few self-inflicted failures in this whole process. The single permit for self-employment covers the sequence in more detail.

If you live outside Pakistan

Many Pakistani founders live in the Gulf, the United Kingdom or the EU. That does not change your nationality, but it can change both the entry question and the mission question.

The D visa guidance says you apply at the mission competent for your country of residence. If you legally live outside Pakistan, that may place your application with a mission untouched by the Tehran and Beijing dispute. Confirm it with the mission for the country you actually live in.

Separately, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs sets out a carve-out for holders of a valid Schengen, EU Member State or United Kingdom visa, or a visa of the United States: entry, transit and a stay in Serbia without applying for a Serbian visa, up to 90 days in any 180-day period, and only within the validity of that visa.

For residence permits the list is narrower and the difference catches people out. Residence permits issued by Schengen area countries, EU Member States or the United States are covered. The United Kingdom appears for visas only, so a UK residence permit on its own is not in that list, and neither is a UAE residence permit.

This is a short-stay entitlement and nothing more. The official pages do not address whether an entry made under it can lead to a temporary residence application. The single-permit page does say that a foreign citizen who can enter Serbia without a visa may apply for the single permit upon arrival, but it does not define who counts as such, so confirm with the Ministry of Interior rather than assuming you are covered.

The business bank account

After the company is registered you need a business account at a bank. Serbia's official guidance says you will most often need the registration decision, the tax identification number certificate, a notary certified OP form of signatures, a card of deposited signatures and a signed contract. The OP form requirement depends on the bank, and the guidance tells you to check your chosen bank's own website for its documentation before you go in.

You do not need a company stamp to open the account. The same page states that companies and entrepreneurs do not need a stamp for this, and that a bank demanding one can be reported to the Government or the National Bank contact centre.

We prepare the company documentation and coordinate the appointment. The bank decides. The official page on accounts for residents and non-residents, which covers individuals rather than companies, states that a bank freely chooses its clients and independently decides whether to enter a business relationship, under its own business policy and internal acts including risk management measures. That same page states two limits: a bank may not refuse on discriminatory grounds such as citizenship, gender or religion, and on the client's written request it must state its reasons for refusal in writing.

Serbia's official guidance says nothing either way about remote company-account opening. Our foreign-founder workflow nevertheless requires the director to attend identification in Serbia, and the bank independently decides on the account. What a foreign owner faces at the bank sets out the preparation in full.

• For your personal account, the official guidance states that foreign citizens are non-residents during their first year of stay under the Law on Foreign Exchange Operations.
• Someone holding a residence permit or work visa who stays beyond one year becomes a resident, must notify the bank, and the old account is then closed and a resident account opened rather than converted.
• A non-resident individual is asked for a written request, an identity document such as a passport, a document showing place of temporary or permanent residence over the last year, and a signed account agreement.
• Currencies and account types offered to a non-resident follow the bank's own business policy.

What we can and cannot do on this route

We are an accounting firm in Belgrade. We provide administrative support: company registration and APR filings, document coordination, translation and legalisation, bookkeeping and payroll, and preparing a visa or permit file so it is complete before it is lodged. We do not give legal advice, we do not act as your legal representative, and nobody here is a lawyer. If your case needs representation or an appeal, you need a licensed lawyer and we will tell you so.

On the Pakistan question specifically we cannot tell you which mission will accept your file, because no official source currently states it. What we can do is register the company, keep the accounting and the filings in order so the business is genuine and documented, and have the application file ready the day the route is confirmed. What the founder support service covers is written out in full, including what is excluded.