Corporate banking
Banking on a freelance permit
A freelance permit is a licence without a company, which leaves banks unsure whether they are opening a business account or a personal one. The answer decides what you can do with it.
The reality
What the bank is actually deciding.
A freelance permit licenses an individual to carry on a professional activity without incorporating. From a bank's perspective that is an awkward category: there is no separate legal person, no share capital and no MOA, so the documentation that drives a corporate application does not exist. Some banks handle this with a business account in the individual's trade name, others treat it as a personal account with a note, and a few decline it. The practical difference matters, because a personal account receiving business income creates problems that are hard to unwind.
The most common mistake is running everything through one personal account. It works until it does not: a bank notices a personal account receiving regular third-party commercial payments, asks what is happening, and freezes it while you explain. It also makes the income evidence that the Green Visa freelance route requires — AED 360,000 a year for two preceding years, attributable to permitted activity — almost impossible to present cleanly, because the statements are a mix of salary, transfers from family and client payments. Separating the accounts on day one costs nothing and solves both problems.
What gets asked for
- Legal form
- An individual with a permit, not a company
- Account type
- Business account in the trade name where the bank offers it
- Mixing
- Business income into a personal account attracts queries
- Green Visa
- Requires a clean two-year income trail attributable to the permit
- Payment acceptance
- Card acceptance usually needs a business account
- Alternative
- A free zone company, which banks more conventionally
Where the time goes
The file
What to put in front of them.
- Ask each bank how it treats freelance permitsThe answer varies and determines whether you get a business account or a flagged personal one.
- Open a separate account for the work from day oneEven if it is technically a second personal account. The separation is what matters.
- Invoice consistently under the permitSame trade name, same activity description, matching the permit.
- Keep the trail Green Visa-readyTwo years of attributable income at AED 360,000 a year is the qualifying threshold, and it cannot be reconstructed later.
- Consider incorporating if volumes justify itA free zone company banks more conventionally and takes card payments more easily.
Related
Questions
Some banks offer a business account against a freelance permit; others treat it as personal. Ask before applying rather than after.
You can, and it frequently causes queries. It also makes the Green Visa income evidence very difficult to present.
Usually yes. Payment gateways and merchant accounts generally require a licensed entity with a business account.
For banking and payments, generally yes. For cost and simplicity, the permit wins. It depends which constraint is binding.
One question
Where will the money actually come from?
Then the account is a cross-border file, and the compliance question is which countries and in which currencies. Name the corridors in the application rather than waiting to be asked — an unexplained payment from a jurisdiction the bank did not expect is what freezes accounts in month three.
What the file has to containOr just ask usThen substance is the question rather than geography. A local trading history, an Ejari and a customer list make this straightforward; a flexi-desk with no domestic contracts yet is where onboarding slows, and the fix is evidence rather than a different bank.
Why applications get declinedOr just ask usThen source of wealth carries the file, and 'savings' is not an answer. A share sale agreement, a property disposal, audited accounts from an overseas company or a series of tax returns are. Assemble that before the first meeting, not after the first question.
Evidencing source of fundsOr just ask us