How to build US credit as a foreigner from the Netherlands
Your BKR registration is compulsory, comprehensive, and completely unreadable to a US lender. Dutch credit providers are required to participate in it; Experian has never heard of it.
For a reference on the U.S. business credit bureaus, see the U.S. business credit bureaus guide.
There is one detail in the Dutch system that is genuinely useful to you, though, and almost nobody mentions it. It is at the end of the next section.
What BKR is, and why participation is not optional
Stichting BKR maintains the Dutch credit register. The Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens — the Dutch data protection authority — states that providers of credit must participate in BKR registration, and that other credit-information agencies may also be used.
Mandatory participation is the thing to notice. In several neighbouring markets, comprehensive reporting is a commercial decision by each lender. In the Netherlands, if you borrowed from a credit provider, you are registered, and the register is therefore unusually complete rather than patchy.
BKR says a personal credit summary includes both personal and business credit registrations. Your zzp or BV borrowing and your consumer borrowing can appear in the same overview, which is not how most countries separate the two.
And consumers can view their credit overview online free of charge — plus the detail worth having: BKR operates a request route for people abroad who do not have a Dutch bank account.
If you have left the Netherlands, or your Dutch bank relationship has closed, that route is how you still get your own record. Use it before you start an application process in the US, because reconstructing your borrowing history from memory in front of a bank is worse than having the document.
One boundary: no complete official list of Dutch commercial credit-reporting bodies is publicly documented. What is on the record is the register itself, plus the data protection authority's note that "other credit-information agencies may be used." Nobody should tell you the Dutch market has exactly one bureau.
What that does to your starting position in the US
You arrive with a mandatory, complete, jointly personal-and-business credit record, and no mechanism by which any of it is recognised in the United States has ever been substantiated.
You are not thin-file because your record is thin. You are thin-file because nothing on the American side can read it.
US bureaus generally need around six months of reported activity before a score exists at all. For that period, you are assessed on documents and relationships. Prepare accordingly, and do not let anyone sell you a service claiming to port BKR data into a US bureau — no such route has been substantiated.
Getting capital into the US entity
The Netherlands has had no exchange controls since 1994. The instrument is the External Financial Relations Act 1994 — the Wet financiële betrekkingen buitenland, or Wfbb — and De Nederlandsche Bank's own page on it is the direct source. No restriction on outward investment. No restriction on holding or receiving USD. Standard anti-money-laundering checks and nothing further.
DNB publishes an External Assets dashboard covering direct-investment and other external-asset statistics. It does not publish a founder-level outward-investment rule, and this guide does not invent one.
Which leaves you in a straightforward position: capitalise your US entity, keep clean records of what you sent and why, and expect your bank's own AML questions rather than a state permission process. Being in a SEPA country does not exempt you from those questions: SEPA participation is not an exemption from AML screening or from any provider's onboarding requirements.
A US LLC does not remove you from Dutch rules. Your outbound leg is a Dutch transaction under Dutch law; your US company's dealings with other US companies are domestic to the US. Both remain true, and a structure sold to you on the basis that the first stops being true is one to decline.
Dutch corporate tax, precisely as published
Government.nl states that 2026 corporate tax is 19% up to €200,000 of taxable amount and €38,000 plus 25.8% above it. It separately describes the qualifying 5% participation exemption.
Two bands and a flat euro amount at the break point. That is a more specific published structure than most of the region, and it is worth knowing because the second band applies from a fairly low threshold by international standards — €200,000 is not a large company.
Check before you rely on this: rates and bands are set annually and the figures above are stated for 2026. Confirm the current position before you plan around them.
The participation exemption is a participation exemption. It is not a controlled-foreign-company rule and this guide does not present it as one. The operative Dutch position on CFC treatment is not something to take from a guide, so nothing is claimed about it here. That gap matters if you hold a US entity as a Dutch resident, and it is an adviser's question.
Similarly, the current individual income tax framework and the residence and worldwide-income rule are not stated here. The Belastingdienst publishes the current position and your own facts decide how it applies — that is a question to put to them or to an adviser, not one to settle from a guide you might act on.
The IRS publishes US–Netherlands treaty documents from 1992 plus the 2004 protocol. A treaty affects tax outcomes. It has no bearing on your credit file.
What Dutch founders get wrong
Treating a clean BKR record as an asset in the US. It is an asset in the Netherlands. Its completeness is exactly why Dutch founders overestimate what it does abroad — mandatory reporting feels like it must count everywhere, and it counts nowhere outside the Dutch system.
Assuming a BKR entry from years ago will follow them. It will not reach the US. Whatever is in there, good or bad, has no receiving system there. What you build in the US is genuinely a fresh file.
Reading the €200,000 corporate tax break point as a large-company threshold. It is not. A moderately profitable BV crosses it, and the €38,000-plus-25.8% band applies from there.
Believing SEPA membership smooths bank onboarding for a US entity. It does not. SEPA governs euro payment mechanics; your US bank's AML and documentation requirements are unaffected by it.
The practical sequence
Months 1–3. Request your BKR overview — free online, or through the overseas request route if you no longer hold a Dutch bank account. Get the ITIN if your situation requires one; Form W-7 straight to the IRS. Open a US secured card or credit-builder product that reports to the bureaus, keep utilisation low, pay in full monthly. Verify current terms before applying — these products change eligibility and reporting rules often.
Small and consistent. That is the entire strategy for the first stretch.
Months 4–6. Keep business and personal spending separate, which is doubly worth doing given that BKR merges the two categories in your Dutch overview and US lenders expect them apart. Have your formation documents, EIN letter, invoices and statements ready to produce.
Do not spread applications around hoping one lands. A short window with several enquiries makes a new file harder to read.
Months 7–12. Pull your US reports and check them. Tussenvoegsels — the van, de, van der in Dutch surnames — are handled inconsistently by US systems and are a common cause of split or mismatched files. Check how your name has actually been recorded.
On Amex
This guide reaches no conclusion on your Global Transfer eligibility, because the answer depends on which entity issued your particular card.
Here is the test, so you can apply it yourself. Global Transfer works from your relationship with American Express itself. Where a local card is issued by a partner bank under a Global Network Services licence, the relationship belongs to that bank and there is nothing to bring across. Your cardholder agreement names the issuing entity — go and read it.
If American Express itself issued the card, the licensee problem does not disqualify you. That is not the same as Amex accepting your application, which turns on Amex's own programme criteria. I am giving you the first proposition and stopping there.
Three more conditions apply: primary cardholder, at least three months' tenure, account open and in good standing.
Check before you rely on this: Amex changes these terms. Confirm with Amex directly.
When you don't need us
Get your BKR overview yourself. It is free online, and there is a documented route if you are abroad without a Dutch account. Nobody should charge you for it.
The ITIN is Form W-7 to the IRS. Straightforward cases do not need an intermediary.
Where help earns its cost is the US address problem, the structure question if you are Dutch-resident and running a US entity, and knowing which providers will accept you before you spend applications finding out.
What we do
Keystone Bridge handles the US side for founders outside the United States — formation, EIN, ITIN, US business banking access, and business credit. Pricing is published on this site.
For the broader picture, see building US credit as a foreigner, opening a US business bank account from the Netherlands and LLC vs C-Corp for Dutch founders.