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Comment by kube-system | Hacker News Reader

There are many financial products which require business incorporation.

"Financial products" is vague, so what if we just go down the list of payment methods and see which ones require being incorporated.

Credit card? No. ACH? No. Wire transfer? No. Cash? No. Crypto? No. Check? No. IOU on a napkin? No. Pokemon card? No. Sex? Weirdly illegal in most places, but still no.

...uh...which ones did I miss?

You can certainly use all of those mediums via consumer fintech, but you will often find yourself limited to products which are designed for consumers, and many B2B service providers may refuse to work with you.

Nobody said consumer fintech? You can just operate as a business. "Sole proprietor" is a real thing that almost every service knows how to deal with, and if one can't there's a competitor willing to right next door.

"Sole proprietor" is a real thing that many B2B services deal with by throwing your application in the trash.

Yes, you can go get a personal loan, or a retail banking account, or a personal payment processing account, but as I said, you're going to be locked out of a lot of B2B products.

Sure. If you absolutely need one of those services then you do the thing. Most of the time there are alternatives, IME.

Example, since you edited to add examples: I have several business bank accounts and far too many Stripe accounts all registered as sole prop. I haven't had to take a loan but I do have a sole prop credit card. My understanding is that even with an LLC a bank is going to require a personal guarantee for a loan.

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