Opening a Serbian Business Bank Account as a Foreign Owner

The account comes after registration, not before

A business account belongs to a registered company, so the company has to exist first. The official page on opening a business account starts from exactly that point: once you have registered the company, you open a business account at a bank. It is written as a practical next step rather than as a statutory obligation, and no official page we read sets a deadline, a penalty for delay or a fee for opening the account.

In practice the registration decision and the tax number certificate are the two documents that unlock everything else, and both come out of the registration itself. If you are planning a trip around the bank appointment, work backwards from those two and check how long formation takes before you book anything.

The documents you will most often need

Serbia's official guidance lists the set banks usually ask for. It is worded as what you will most often need, so treat it as a typical pack rather than a legal checklist.

• The registration decision for your company.
• The certificate of your tax number.
• A notary-certified OP form. This is the item the official page singles out as depending from bank to bank.
• A card of deposited signatures.
• A signed contract with the bank.

Requirements differ from bank to bank

The official guidance is unusually direct about this. The OP form requirement is qualified as depending from bank to bank, and readers are told to check the chosen bank's website for the necessary documentation before going in. The page points to the National Bank of Serbia's list of banks as the place to start.

Our guide to opening a company in Serbia as a foreigner makes the same point from the practical side: the business account is the step where the bank sets the rules, and every bank has its own identification and client-checking requirements.

Ask your bank for its own list in writing before you print, translate or certify anything, and ask in the same message whether the director has to attend in person.

You do not need a company stamp

Companies and entrepreneurs do not need a stamp to open a bank account. The official guidance goes one step further: if a bank demands one, that can be reported to the Government or the National Bank contact centre.

This is worth carrying with you, because it still comes up. A company seal has not been required in Serbia since 2018, and banks occasionally ask anyway. If a branch officer tells you to have a stamp made before the account can be opened, you now know what the state says about it.

Resident or non-resident: a rule about individuals, not about company accounts

Serbia's official page on accounts for residents and non-residents covers accounts held by individuals. It does not deal with company or legal-entity accounts at all, so read this section as being about your personal account rather than your company's.

Under the Law on Foreign Exchange Operations, foreign citizens are non-residents during their first year of stay. Someone holding a residence permit or work visa who stays beyond one year becomes a resident. On acquiring resident status you must notify the bank, and the bank closes the old account and opens a resident one. It is not converted in place, so plan for a new account number and for telling everyone who pays you.

This is a foreign exchange status, not a tax residency status, and the official page does not equate the two. For a non-resident individual opening an account, the page lists these items:

• A written request, on paper or electronically.
• An identity document, such as a passport or a valid photo ID.
• A document showing your place of temporary or permanent residence over the last year.
• A signed account agreement.

What else the individual account page says

Separately, under the anti-money-laundering law the bank establishes your name, your date and place of birth, your residence, and the type, number, issuer, and date and place of issue of your identity document.

A foreign currency account is opened for a non-resident in line with the bank's own business policy, and only in currencies traded on the foreign exchange market. The account types on offer follow the bank's terms.

On remote handling the page says one narrow thing: if the request is submitted to the bank electronically, the bank, under its general business conditions, is not obliged to require the person to sign the request. That is about a signature on a form, for an individual. It is not official confirmation that you can open a Serbian account without coming here, and it says nothing at all about company accounts.

The bank chooses its clients, and must give reasons in writing

The clearest official statement on this sits on the page about accounts for residents and non-residents, which means it is written about individuals. It says a bank freely decides on the choice of clients, and that banks independently decide whether to enter a business relationship with a given client, acting under their business policy and internal acts, which must include risk management measures.

Two limits are stated alongside it. Banks may not rely on discriminatory grounds such as citizenship, gender or religion. And on the client's written request, they must state in writing the reasons for refusing a business relationship.

The page about company accounts says nothing about client acceptance, so we will not claim that the same wording binds a bank assessing your company. What is certain either way is that the decision is the bank's. If one bank declines, ask for the reasons in writing and approach another.

What we do, and what we cannot do

Biro Vision provides administrative support. We register the company, obtain the registration decision and the tax number, assemble the document pack in the form your bank asks for, arrange certified translation and notary certification where they are needed, and coordinate the appointment.

We are not a bank, and nobody here is a lawyer. We do not approve accounts, we do not influence banks and we do not promise outcomes. Once the account is live we take over the monthly bookkeeping so that the payments running through it are recorded from the first one, and our prices are published before you commit to anything.