Access US banking from Vietnam through a US LLC.

Vietnam's constraint is not risk appetite — it is currency architecture. The dong is a managed currency and the State Bank of Vietnam regulates foreign exchange tightly. In practice: a domestic company's ability to hold and freely use USD is limited, inbound foreign currency is routed through the local system, and outbound transfers require documentation of purpose. That is workable for an importer with invoices. It is painful for a software company paying for AWS, Meta ads, contractors in three countries and a dozen SaaS subscriptions.

The second constraint is coverage. Several major payment platforms and marketplaces either exclude Vietnamese entities or support them with restricted functionality, and US corporate clients frequently prefer not to originate international wires to Vietnam at all. Procurement departments push back; deals slow down.

The third is perception, and it is the one founders underestimate. A US enterprise buyer signing a five-figure annual contract wants a counterparty with a familiar legal identity, a W-9, and a US account to pay. A US LLC supplies all three without changing where the work is done or where the team sits.

For most Vietnamese founders the shape is a US LLC contracting with customers, and the Vietnamese entity contracting with the US LLC as a service provider. Revenue lands in USD in the US, the US LLC pays the Vietnamese company for development or fulfilment services against a real intercompany agreement, and the Vietnamese company pays local salaries, taxes and social insurance as normal.

That structure only holds up if it is documented like a real arrangement, because it is one: a written services agreement, invoices with defined scope, transfer pricing that reflects the value actually created in Vietnam, and consistency between what the US bank was told and what the Vietnamese books show. Done properly it is ordinary international structuring. Done as an afterthought it is the kind of unexplained flow that closes accounts and attracts local scrutiny.

What you should not do is run US platform payouts into a personal Vietnamese account indefinitely. It works until volume grows, then it becomes the reason for a review — on both sides.

Software outsourcing, app and game studios, SaaS, print-on-demand, agency services and affiliate businesses with clean traffic sources generally clear standard onboarding when the file is prepared. Volume is not the obstacle; documentation quality is.

The harder profiles are high-chargeback dropshipping, unlicensed crypto activity, gambling-adjacent affiliate traffic, and any model where the ultimate payer cannot be identified. Vietnam also has a large and legitimate crypto user base, which means source-of-funds documentation gets asked about more often than founders expect — have exchange statements and a coherent wealth history ready before you apply, not after.

One specific trap: app and game studios monetising through ad networks sometimes cannot name their payers precisely. US compliance will ask. Prepare a payer list with network names, historical payout statements and expected monthly ranges.

File the LLC, then file the EIN the same week — without a US SSN the IRS route takes four to eight weeks and everything downstream waits on it. Wyoming and Delaware are both fine; state choice affects fees and reporting, not whether a bank says yes.

While the EIN is pending, build the file: formation certificate, operating agreement, registered agent confirmation, passports and Vietnamese proof of address for every beneficial owner and signatory, evidence of the operating business (site, contracts, invoices, existing statements), the intercompany services agreement, and a two-page business narrative that predicts the account's behaviour accurately.

Then a payment institution in one to three weeks, card acquiring in parallel where relevant, and a chartered bank where the profile supports the longer process. Plan six to twelve weeks from decision to first payment received, and hold two structurally different rails so a single portfolio-policy change is an inconvenience rather than an outage.

Assessment first: residency of the beneficial owners, what the business does, who pays it and from where, volumes and average ticket, and how the Vietnamese entity fits. We tell you whether US banking is realistic for your profile and which institutions match, before anything is filed.

Then formation, EIN, registered agent and operating agreement; the banking file prepared to institutional standard including the intercompany documentation; submission to institutions whose stated appetite fits; and management of the compliance dialogue through to opening. Afterwards we design the rail stack — ACH, wires, acquiring, redundancy — and keep the entity compliant with annual state and federal filings, including Form 5472 where applicable.

We do not contact previous institutions, we do not recover frozen funds, and no institution's decision is ever guaranteed. If we do not think a file can be placed, we say so up front.