Payments

Getting approved by Stripe and Shopify Payments

By the Atiko team · Last reviewed October 2026

A store that cannot take card payments is not yet a business. For most e-commerce founders, the reason for forming a company in the United States, the United Kingdom or Hong Kong is to hold a payment account in a country where Stripe and Shopify Payments operate. Both are available to companies in all three, each subject to the provider’s own verification.

That verification is the subject of this guide. Providers do not publish a simple pass mark, and they alone decide whether an account is activated, limited or closed. What can be explained is what they look at, why they look at it, and how a well-prepared file reduces the questions they need to ask. Atiko is independent of Stripe and Shopify and has no influence over their decisions.

Why payment providers verify so much

A payment provider is a regulated financial business. It is required by law to know who its customers are and to prevent its service from being used for fraud or money laundering. It also carries financial risk of its own. If a merchant takes payments and fails to deliver, the cardholders dispute the charges, and when the merchant cannot cover those disputes the loss can fall on the provider.

Verification answers two questions that follow from this. The first is whether the business and the people behind it are who they say they are. The second is whether the business is likely to deliver what it sells without generating an unusual level of refunds and disputes. Nearly every document request and every review maps to one of these two questions.

The four things that are checked

Banks and providers verify the company, the people behind it, the bank account and the store. Each layer is checked against the others, so consistency matters as much as completeness. A company name spelled one way on the formation document and another way on the store’s footer is the kind of small mismatch that leads to a request for more information.

The same details should appear everywhere: the legal name, the registered address, the tax ID, the names of the owners and the domain of the store.

• The company, through its formation documents and tax or registration number
• The people, through identity documents and proof of address for owners and the account representative
• The bank account, which must be able to receive payouts in the company’s country and currency
• The store, through its content, its policies and what it sells

The company and the people behind it

The company layer is documentary. For a US company the provider typically asks for the legal name, the EIN and the formation details. For a UK company it asks for the Companies House registration. For a Hong Kong company it asks for the Certificate of Incorporation and the Business Registration Certificate. The provider compares what you enter with public or official records.

The people layer concerns the owners who hold a significant share of the company and the account representative, who is the individual opening and managing the account. Each is identified with a government-issued document, and often a proof of residential address. Requirements for the account representative vary by country and change over time, so they need to be confirmed against the provider’s current rules at the moment of applying.

The bank account

A payment account needs a destination for payouts. Providers generally expect a business account in the name of the company, in the country where the payment account is registered or in a currency they support for that country. A personal account, or an account under a different name, typically does not pass.

This is why the bank account is opened before the payment application is finalized. It also explains the order of the whole setup for a US company, where the EIN comes before the bank and the bank comes before the provider. Banks conduct their own review of the company and its owners and decide independently whether to open the account. You are the account holder in every case, and Atiko never holds client funds.

What reviewers look for on the store

The store is the part founders most often leave unfinished. A reviewer opens the website to understand what is sold, to whom, at what price and on what terms. A site with placeholder text, no contact details or missing policies gives the reviewer nothing to assess, and an application in that state is commonly paused or declined.

The policies should describe what you actually do. A returns policy copied from another store and promising conditions you cannot meet becomes a source of disputes later. Delivery times should be realistic for your supply chain, since late deliveries are a frequent cause of chargebacks.

• Contact details, including an email address and a business address
• A refund and returns policy
• A shipping policy with realistic delivery times
• Terms of service
• A privacy policy
• Clear product descriptions and prices

What you sell matters

Each provider maintains a list of prohibited and restricted businesses. Some categories are refused outright. Others are accepted only with additional documentation or under specific conditions. These lists differ between Stripe and Shopify Payments, differ by country and are updated from time to time.

It is worth reading the current list for your country before forming a company around a particular product. A structure that is perfectly valid in law does not make a restricted product acceptable to a provider. If your products fall in a category that needs additional review, the provider will usually ask for supplier information, licenses or evidence of compliance, and it makes its decision on that basis.

The order of operations

A sound sequence follows the dependencies between the steps. The company is formed. For a US company the EIN is obtained. The business bank account is opened. The store is completed with its policies and contact details. The payment application is then submitted with information that matches the documents exactly.

Applying before these elements are ready rarely saves time. An application submitted with a missing tax ID or an unfinished store tends to trigger a manual review, and a declined application can be harder to reopen than a first application made with a complete file. The time spent waiting for a tax ID or a bank account is well used on the store itself.

After approval

Activation is the start of an ongoing relationship. Providers monitor accounts continuously and may review one again when volumes rise quickly, when the product range changes or when dispute levels increase. During a review a provider may ask for supplier invoices, tracking numbers or updated company documents, and it may delay payouts or hold a reserve while it looks at them.

The practical response is to keep records in order and reply quickly and precisely. Keeping the company in good standing matters here as well, because a provider can ask for current registry documents at any time. Changes to ownership, address or business activity should be reported to the provider when they occur. None of this removes the provider’s discretion, and no one can guarantee an approval or a continued account.