“I don’t understand what you want to do.”
– said by multiple bankers when I told them I wanted to open a business account.

“We haven’t received your emails.”
– Bank haPoalim, Jerusalem, despite my personal account being there and my emails received just fine.

“You don’t have an appointment. Why are you surprised no one is helping you?”
– Bank haPoalim, Modiin, despite the appointment making system not working and despite already having an account with them.

“We’ll call you.”
– Bank Leumi, banker #1 after ~5 visits and after completing all necessary paperwork two visits ago.

“We don’t have your documents and the one we do have [which is not my document] has the wrong address. You should try a different bank that will be easier for you.”
– Bank Leumi, banker #2 after my lawyer met with the manager to help me.

“I know someone who is a branch manager in Petach Tikva – try him.”
– before said branch manager says he doesn’t understand what I’m trying to do and doesn’t return my messages to make an appointment.

You made Aliyah, so I want to help you.”
– said by the fifth bank I tried. Bank Mercantile, Sanhedria, Jerusalem.

Why is it so dang hard to open a bank account in Israel?

I. Don’t. Know. Seems no one does. Drown you in paperwork like it’s an end user license agreement to use a piece of software … too long for anyone to read or comprehend only in Israel you need to paper sign, initial, stamp, … what have you.

As an American, it’s even worse because the United States demands even more paperwork from you – the US fined Israeli banks for not meeting requirements regarding money laundering years ago and so banks really don’t want to work with Americans. When I saw the stack of paperwork needed … someone really, really has to want to help you to spend all that time dealing with it all. Buying an apartment complex in Florida takes less paperwork. Maybe four apartment complexes. There are enough documents to stuff four stomached bovine creature until he suffocates. To actually read, understand, and translate all the documents would take about ten years and I’d rather eat steak.

How It Should Go to Open a Company

This is … after having gone through it all. Here are the steps:

Go a lawyer who opens your company. Let him handle all the paperwork.
A week later: wait for “permission” to use your company via text message.
Get a company stamp.
Make sure your identification documents are up to date.
Go to the bank with your paperwork from the lawyer for your company and that specific bank.
Sign and stamp a half ream of papers that the bank has prepared for you when you come in the second time.

That could … and should … take no more than a few weeks. I got tripped up on steps 3, 4, and 5. Step 3 because I thought they couldn’t be serious. Step 4 because my ID document was stuck at the post office and I had no code. Step five because … banks are unnecessarily difficult here until I found the right one. More details below.

Forming a Company – How it actually went

In order to avoid double-taxation and state income tax I’ve created a company in the United States owned by my company in Israel. This requires opening companies both countries and bank accounts in both countries.

	United States	Israel
Time to completion	1/2 hour	4 months+
Bank meetings	0	12+ (could have been 2)
Professionals hired	0	3
Pieces of paper needed	0	200+
Signatures needed	2-ish (electronic)	200+
Cost	$100	$3500?
Permission needed	NO	YES
Electronic access	NO	YES
Number of times to use company stamp	stamp? huh?	30
Electronic documents needed	YES	YES (except Mercantile)
Paper documents needed	NO	YES

Let’s discuss this chart for a bit – opening an LLC in Wyoming takes about 10 minutes and a $100 fee. I splurged on an extra $25 for an agency to form it because it includes one year of registered agent service. (Don’t tell my client’s it is this easy.) Maybe another two minutes to get a Tax ID number for the IRS. PDFs received.

US … opening a bank account online where I do business already … another 10 minutes, maybe?

Israel … oy. You cannot open a company without physically going to a lawyer’s office and paying the lawyer to sign a stack of papers. Then he needs to prepare documents specific to each bank with questions as obnoxious as, “what is the company’s dedicated IP address?” (Internet address.) Think about that one for a bit. How many ways does that question make no sense for a new company.

Me: “Okay, where’s my certificate of formation?”
Lawyer: “Oh, it’s quick. You’ll get a text message in a few days.”

I get a text message which said I now have “permission” to use the company. Who the Chairman Mao Zedong are you? I need your permission to do business? I felt so American at that moment of government control that I could have been riding a bull (with unstuffed mouth) while shooting a shotgun, holding an American flag, and chanting, “yee haw!” Haven’t even owned a Chevy since 2008 though I never saw a levy that was dry anyway.

(Side note: Israel has Chinese car companies with names that sound suspiciously like American brands yet are just enough not to be trademark infringement like “Cherry” and “MG”.)

On the upside, I can now login to “.gov” (pronounced “guuhhhhv”) to do stuff with the company – it’s a box to click on once I login to my personal account for a lot of government tasks. That is amazing – everything is electronic here – which is great when it works.

Paying Taxes from my Business

Just kidding. Not there yet. (I have another story about trying to pay real estate transfer tax, here. Paying “regional” taxes can be done by credit card which is very easy – kind of like property taxes in America.) The tax authority won’t “open an account” for me until I have an Israeli bank account for the business even though I can send payment by bank wire from America. Fine. Waiting for all this to be put into place.

How Paperwork Works; Israel vs. US

United States: “Paperwork is for doctor’s offices and health insurance only. Sign electronically, notarize electronically (you can do that now), and if you’re buying an apartment building or something, we’ll have the documents ready for you to sign when you come in.”

Israel: “It would be uncivilized to use paper for medical care in 2025. Besides, our banks own all the paper in the country. However, being an advanced society, you can and will handle everything by email … and then you’ll come in, in person, and do it all again. We do, however, all use these handy plastic translucent covers for papers that you can have.”

The first time I received one of those plastic translucent paper holder cover things, I thought that’s so fancy. Now I have so many that they could be used to clean cat poop when he misses the litter box. (My bets are that the male cat is the one who can’t aim.)

Forming my Wyoming LLC was a shorter series of online forms than some orders for pizza delivery – with the addition of a social security number. To be fair, New Jersey has more online paperwork and New York has even more, though combined they still wouldn’t even begin to fill a cow’s mouth.

Further delay: Two forms of government ID

I was paused from doing anything for a while which really set me back. The Teudat Zehut is the government ID in Israel… it’s a driver’s license + social security card to identify you, combined into one … except you need two of them anyway … and a third document to drive. Okay, I guess they just like to mix it up by using documents for what is in their title.

There are three types of Teudat Zehuts:

The first one you get upon arrival in a nice little foldable book
Another one on blue paper with all your kids’ info as well
A card that looks like a driver’s license in hard plastic

Now, another reason why it’s difficult to work with Americans – I had no idea what the problem was … “here’s my Teudat Zehut” … “no, your blue one.” Huh? It’s white. The banker guy had to show me his that he carries around in his wallet. There’s a white card and there’s a blue piece of paper.

_{The card above isn’t good enough without a blue piece of paper!}

My blue piece of paper version was at home, hiding in a pile of papers we got when we arrived. Back to the bank I went again …

Teudat Zehut Expired / Not Available

This was another three days of exasperation. The ID you get upon arrival lasts for three months. Then in another act of paperwork mayhem, you have to go to a government office to get a new one. Then they put it in the mail, and you need a code to pick it up.

The government didn’t give us the code to pick it up.

My wife went back and got a code for hers. Fine. Then she didn’t click to activate the card on the government website. Why? Well, why would you have to do that? You just used an access code to get it already. Until we figured that out, the bank said it was expired.

Ha … now for mine … I was poking around “.gov” one day before all that … I clicked the button to activate my new Teudat Zehut.

Oops. This means that the government no longer had a code to give me to pick up the ID from the post office because I must have picked it up.

Round and round I went … very nice people … security guard let me in the government office after closing … got the cellular number of the post office person … the lady at the government office called the post office lady … they spoke and spoke and spoke and nothing.

A few days later the post office lady calls and says to come in. She gives me the ID and says … well, how else are you going to get it?

Armed with four documents – we are ready to go!

Side Rant: Proper Use of Technology

Remember when PowerPoint first came out and everyone was adding all sorts of fancy animations and swoops between slides? Took a few years to realize that detracted from actual learning.

True story 1: potential client in my office with a projector. Just tell me what your invention is? No. Show me your laptop screen? No. “We have to project it on the wall in low light.” First slide … “PutinCare” (changing facts). What is that? They want to provide healthcare to Russians. Okay … what’s your invention? It’s a laptop. What does it do? You know… what a laptop does.

It sure was a great flashy first page of their slides on my wall with moving lights through tubes going in different directions. They missed the point by about sixty cow lengths.

True story 2: Client comes in and is telling me about the difficulty of measuring the size of salmon – too small and you get fined. (Changing facts.) They have to hold it up and try to measure the height while it flops around – if only they lied the fish flat on an X-ray machine … on a boat … with salt water … to determine the position of the vertebrae and tell you whether or not it was big enough.

Like a complete idiot I asked them, “why don’t you just put a ruler on the railing?”

Silence. No client. I’m such a fool.

Here’s the right way to use electronic systems: convey information more efficiently.

Here’s the wrong way to use electronic systems: make it harder to convey information.

Israel banking is all like … print it all, fill it out, email it, wait for a response and on and on and on and on. Israel is great for electronic integrated systems – and that you can do business with a bank by email (and Whatsapp when the bankers let you). That is so much not American. That could be great.

Here’s how misuse electronics: when you require original documents on paper there’s no reason to require the documents by email first. When you require a face-to-face meeting there’s no reason to require documents by email first. When I went to Bank Mercantile (huge shoutout for helping me – jump down to branch 736) the manager had a ridiculous stack of papers ready for us to sign and stamp.

I had a fish on the railing moment when I was at Mercantile – why, exactly, was email involved at all when being there in person to sign the documents is required anyway?

Bank Leumi actually cancelled an appointment 1/2 hr before because they didn’t receive my W-9 until the night before. So? It’s a stupid simple form with my name and social security number on it. I went to the meeting anyway, brought the filled-out form, and she said actually I need to have other documents X, Y, and Z which I had given to them two months prior, and they misplaced. Sigh.

My two mistakes when going to a bank that would actually help:

I didn’t take the country seriously when they said I need a “company stamp”. It’s like stamping your kids’ name in their underwear before they go to sleepaway camp. Thankfully I knew of a place that ordered those for you.
I signed my Hebrew name on some documents which doesn’t match the name on my legal ID.

Well, since I’m ordering a stamp, might as well order them both now:

Stamp 1: “Google, Inc – we have dedicated IP addresses”.
Stamp 2: “Shaindy’s underpants – we’re dedicated to the P in IP.”

(An “IP address” is a set of numbers that identifies a specific device on the internet.)

While doing all that, I went to the lawyer to have him sign the new documents and came back all prepared the next time and Mercantile had a whole new stack of rudiment-stuffers for me to sign. No wonder why no one wants to bank with Americans.

Mercantile actually called me to see when I was returning. That’s better services than even America.

Specific bank experience: Bank Leumi

I attempted this bank for a while, so it gets its own section. This tripped me up for a while – lost months on them. They were very polite and helpful – they actually noticed I was there (unlike Poalim) and sent me to the right person. Impressive. Also … the conversations were all in Hebrew up until this point – I like when people let me speak Hebrew so I can practice and learn. You can get by with English though much better if you can speak Hebrew.

He gives me papers. I fill them out and return. He gives me more papers. I fill them out and return. Sometimes he sees me. Sometimes he’s busy. Somehow (it’s a blur at this point) I was in and out of the bank at least half a dozen times until he says I’ve given him all the paperwork he needs.

In the interim: emails from this bank just do not appear in my inbox … not in any of my three email addresses. I have him send documents to my wife and for some reason that works. He keeps saying he doesn’t receive our documents.

You know what … I’ll go to a different branch which caters to the ultra-orthodox Jews! They must accept the documents on paper. The waiting room, by the way, has a bookcase of seforim to learn while waiting … so does the post office.

Very friendly guy … a whole bookcase of seforim (religious texts) to learn while you wait … and he says, “we aren’t allowed to do business banking at this branch” though he scans all the documents for me and sends them to the other branch. Amazing!

Then … back to the branch that handles business accounts: “I’ll call you.” He never does. I show up at the bank again. “I’ll call you.” He never does.

My lawyer gets involved (for no extra pay, I should add) and meets with the branch manager …everyone seems to meet with branch managers around here to get anything done. Okay, here’s some more papers flying electronically between the bank, my lawyer, and myself. Just sign them before the cow starts pooping the earlier documents out. Then … well, I wrote above then what. Cancelled meeting, missing documents, and they say go to a different bank.

SUCCESS: Bank Mercantile, Sanhedria Branch, Jerusalem

My Israeli accountant (as opposed to my American accountant in Israel) suggests this branch. Now … I receive Roi’s Whatsapp and … he answers! We make an appointment, and I show up. I was actually a half hour early … fine, I’ll wait. Nope … I sit down and have a meeting with three people almost immediately. Ahh this is going well.

“What happened at the other bank?”

Oh no. Just put a big letter A on my chest. Mark me with a stain for seven generations and let the ground only grow thistles. Heck, give me pain during childbirth.

“We want to help you because you made Aliyah.”

Oh, thank the heavens.

Then time passes.

More time passes.

Do I have an account yet? Nope – we need to get an “ishur” – permission – from the bank (I guess the head office). That, apparently, takes weeks and that’s normal. They also need a letter from my accountant saying that I’ll pay taxes in both Israel and the United States. Umm… okay. Sure.

I come in … make some mistakes as described above … will need to come back.

Now, get this … Roi called me to arrange the appointment for me return. You had me at “hello”.

Roi has a stack of papers ready for us to sign. Okay, so stack of papers – I lost count at about 70 signatures and 30 times documents needed stamps. Not a joke. It was about that many.

Now I have a business bank account and await the day Israel will accept tax payments from me.

Recommended Professionals

Having gotten numerous recommendations for all of these types of services – and limiting only to those I chose based on a) knowing what they’re talking about, and b) giving good service, these are my recommendations:

Business Lawyer: Barry Shuman
American Accountants in Israel: Mas America
Israeli Accountant / Payroll: Hila Alon
Bank: Bank Mercantile, Sanhedria, Jerusalem

The Entire Aliyah Diary

Arrival

01. Aug 19, 2024: Preparation In America
02. Aug 25, 2024: First Few Days
03. Aug 29, 2024: Moving In

Cultural Adjustment Fun

Cultural Adjustment Difficulties

On The Roads

Shopping

11. Oct 13, 2024: Packages. (חבילות.)
34. Feb 17, 2025: Finding Obscure Things
41. Mar 23, 2025: New Shopping Habits
44. Apr 6, 2025: Pesach Shopping & Osher Ad

Government and Bureaucracy

Politics and Thought

Travel: South Israel

Travel: Central/North Israel

Travel: From Israel to …

54. June 4, 2025: Marseille and Avignon

Aliyah Blog 54: Marseilles and Avignon – Patently Jewish

June 4, 2025

[…] in Israel32. Feb 5, 2025: How To Hire the Wrong Person33. Feb 10, 2025: Quest to Pay My Taxes48. May 4, 2025: Bank Account for BusinessPolitics & Thought12. Oct 25, 2024: October Sun and the Jew16. Nov 17, 2024: Where People Look […]

Aliyah Blog #48: Bank Account for Business in Israel

An American Trying to Open a Business in Israel