Business Bank Account for US LLC - Transferring from and to Brazil

Finances
1

Hi all!
I run a US LLC. It is a trading business for physical goods, industrial products, mainly marine spare parts.
I buy the parts in South Korea, China, UAE and Germany and sell mostly to Brazil.
Everything is 100% transparent.
Lately I have a banking problem.
My business bank account is at Bank of America.
They cancelled my account. It is still working part way, since I can still receive transfers, but I can not execute any. At the fraud department they confirmed the cancellation but are not allowed to give any reason.
My assessment is that it was cancelled for several transfers to the above mentioned countries, which are not exactly on the US all time favorite list.
So I need a new bank account which operates with US dollar.
I have read the articles:

THE BEST BUSINESS BANK ACCOUNTS TO OPEN FROM ANYWHERE

HOW TO OPEN A US BANK ACCOUNT FOR NON-RESIDENTS

Chase does not work for me if they charge 2-5% for an international transaction.
Schwab seems to be the one for me (any other suggestions?).
also I read the recent:

US dollar account in EU

But the advices do not seem to be a perfect solution for my US company.

I do not dare using Fin Techs because of higher sums of 20-40k USD per transfer.
I have not tried, but I heard from many sides that several Fin Techs sometimes freeze the amounts without any warning. I can not risk a bank to freeze amounts, because the transfer dates are normally scheduled and failing to live up to the dates means loss of trust on part of the costumers.
Also the Wise business account does not work with Brazil at all.
The Payoneer business is expensive (3% transfer fee) and it can only be used as a billing service for incoming transfers, plus sums limited to a daily amount of 10.000 USD.

I have no residency in the US and there is another problem:
Since the corona restrictions the visa applications at any US embassy are suspended.
Although I have a European passport I have no permission to enter with an ESTER.
That means until the corona ban is over I have to use a remote option.

I am happy for any suggestion or advice.

2

As a guess… you probably need to go actually talk to banks. Look for the business side of someone like Deutsche or HSBC that is foreign and has a footprint in the US, or even a local branch of Chase or Citi. It sounds like your issues are around KYC rules, and as you note fintechs are not going to be able to solve those kinds of problems because there’s no way to have the detailed relationship so they’re just going to use algos to figure out what to whack off when and then there’s no customer support to deal with when they do it because that costs money.

Keep in mind that you don’t necessarily need a “US bank”. Folks like Deutsche and BNP and Credit Agricole and Barclays have US banking entities, even if there are no obvious branches or anyone to talk to, specifically for the purpose of facilitating international business. Most people just don’t realize this.

See who might have a branch where you are, or where you can get to, where you can go talk to a human banker.

I would guess that there is no way you will avoid paying higher fees than you would like. Again, nothing for free, and if you need to do something that is high-touch, you will pay for it. We have all been spoiled by this whole notion of “no fees”. Yes there are fat bank margins in there to be cut, but there’s also simple reality that someone is paying somewhere, and if you don’t know who it is, it’s probably still you.

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Hi Jeff,

thanks for your answer. I tried to talk to branches of US banks: Chase, Citti, HSBC in Brazil a couple of month ago. For business banking they seem to only attend costumers with Brazilian companies. Fortunately I will be in Germany in the end of august and I can talk to some banks there. Right now I need a quick solution to be able to transfer… actually this week! Later I can always find a better solution.

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