Opening a business bank account in Mexico takes longer than you plan.

Without a bank account you cannot operate as a company in Mexico. You can try to pay from abroad, but in our experience that created problems with treating those payments as a business expense. Ask your tax specialist how it applies to your case.

The hardest part for us was funding the Mexican operation from outside the country. If the foreign income is not documented well, it can cause a problem for the party receiving it.

To open a bank account in Mexico, the company has to be formed in Mexico first, and that does not take two days. It involves choosing the structure, formalizing the company, and getting its tax registration, and each step depends on the one before it. Only then can the bank review the company. Plan for the entity and the bank as one sequence, not two separate tasks.

Once the entity exists, the company has to pass the bank’s own KYC (know-your-customer) review, with special requirements when the owners are foreign. The details change by bank and by company. In our case, what mattered was a complete and clear file:

• Apostilled documents from the home country.
• Verification of identities and a full KYC (know-your-customer) process for the owners: the cap table for owners that are companies, and a passport for owners that are individuals.
• Powers of attorney.
• Translations needed to prove where the funds came from.
• Declarations about the origin of funds coming from investment funds.

A company with international owners is reviewed more closely than a local one. The question behind every document is simple: who is behind this company, and where does the money come from?

We had chosen an advisor who was not physically in Mexico City, where the business operated. Everything took longer: signatures, in-person steps, and answers to the bank’s questions. It also made the company look less established.

What changed things was finding out that the provider we had chosen was not in Mexico, and then working together with the bank’s requirements in hand, translating correctly what each side needed. After that, it was resolved.

The lesson: check that whoever supports your setup has people physically where your business operates, and that they understand what the bank will ask for before you start.

Banks are very careful about who can act for the company. Granting powers of attorney, naming who can sign, and enabling online banking with security tokens each have their own requirements and approvals, and each one needs the bank’s confirmation of who the person is and what they are authorized to do. Some of these steps need original documents or the person in front of the bank. Some banks, for example, hand over security tokens in person at a branch instead of sending them, so they cannot always be done remotely or by courier. Ask early what can be done remotely, who will sign, who will manage the online banking, and what the bank needs to enable each of them, because these steps can take as long as opening the account.

While the account was pending, our platform ran without charging operators in Mexico. It did so for more than five months. That created costs for the parent company and, more importantly, trained operators to expect the service for free. When we began to charge, in 2017, we lost about 80% of our active couriers.

Today you cannot launch a platform without a way to collect payment. Treat billing as part of launch readiness, not something to add later.

At Borzo and iVoy, I worked in years when building software was far more complicated and expensive than it is today. Protecting the code the business depended on, and registering the brand in the right categories, mattered a great deal. A broad name like iVoy can be used in many fields, and a name that sounds like well-known product families, such as the “i” names, makes that more important. Register it widely: in the right countries and in each category where someone else could use it. Ask an intellectual property specialist which categories apply to your business, and register before you publicize the name.

The plan that helped most was one where every step says what it unlocks and what it enables next. When we prepared a 90-day plan for a joint venture in Mexico, the structure looked like this:

1. Days 1–15: market foundation and legal setup, in parallel. Understand the ecosystem and map who matters, and at the same time start the entity, tax ID, bank account, and accounting system. Decide as well, with your specialists, how the first people will be paid before the entity exists. These are not “later” items. They enable almost everything else.
2. Days 16–30: field research and the first hires. Interview the people on both sides of the market before defining your customer profile. Finalize the contract template before signing the first hire.
3. Days 31–45: define the customer, the channels, and the first quick win. Decide who you serve and how you reach them, based on what you saw in the field.
4. Days 46–65: operational design. Order flow, payments, onboarding, base contracts. Test the first orders by hand before automating.
5. Days 66–90: financial model and decision package. Unit economics built from observed field data, not stated rates, and a clear recommendation for the investors.

Two rules from that plan travel well. First, the goal for month one is not revenue: it is understanding how value is created, captured, and shared in the market. Second, hire in sequence, adding operations only after the first people have worked the market.

• Which entity type fits our business, how long will forming it take, and what will the bank ask for from our owners?
• Which documents need an apostille and a certified translation, and how long is each valid?
• Who will sign for the company, who will manage the online banking and tokens, and what does the bank need to enable each of them?
• How do we document the foreign funds that will pay for the operation?
• What can we do, and what should we not do, while the account is pending?
• When do we start billing, and what do we need in place to do it?
• Which brand categories should we register, and where?

At 2122 we connect these decisions to your operating plan early and keep open questions visible. If you are planning your entry to Mexico, let’s talk, or read about how we approach entering Mexico and the Borzo experience.