How to pay a US company from Egypt
You can do it through an authorised bank, and the governing statute is more permissive than Egypt's reputation suggests. What it is not is undocumented: every outward transfer carries a purpose-of-payment code, and getting that code right is the difference between a transfer that clears and one that sits in a queue while someone asks you questions.
For a broader provider comparison, see the non-resident payment processor comparison.
Here is the law, then the mechanics, then the part almost every guide on this subject gets backwards.
The statute, named
Egypt's governing instrument is the Central Bank and Banking Sector Law No. 194 of 2020. Two articles matter to you.
Article 212 is the permissive one. Outward investment carries no restriction through authorised banks, and there is no restriction on holding USD. The Investment Law No. 72 of 2017, Article 6 sits alongside it on the investment side.
Articles 209 to 211 govern remittance and transfer activity, and inbound transfers are allowed via InstaPay.
Read what that structure actually says. The permission is real, and it is conditioned on channel rather than on amount: through authorised banks. Egypt has not built a system that stops you sending money to a US company. It has built one that requires you to send it through a bank that reports.
That distinction matters more than it sounds, because it tells you where your effort goes. Not into finding an allowance or a ceiling — into being a customer whose paperwork makes sense to a compliance officer.
Check before you rely on this: operating conditions under Law 194/2020 are set out in Central Bank of Egypt circulars, and current conditions are the CBE's to state rather than a guide's. Confirm your own position with your bank or the CBE before you move a material sum.
The purpose-of-payment code, which is the actual mechanism
A purpose of payment code is required on outward transfers.
This is the operational heart of the process and it is where Egyptian founders lose time. The code is not administrative decoration — it classifies your transaction for the reporting system, and a code that does not match what you are actually doing is the most common reason a transfer gets held or reversed.
So decide what the payment is before you fill in the form. Paying a US supplier for software is a different thing from capitalising a US company you own, and those are different again from paying a US contractor for services. Your bank can tell you which code fits. Ask before you initiate, not after it stalls.
Keep the wire receipt, the invoice or contract the payment answers to, and a note of the code you used. That file is worth building because it is what makes the next transfer easier and what answers a question you may be asked months later.
A US LLC does not put you outside Egyptian rules. Your outbound leg is an Egyptian transaction under Law 194/2020; your US company's payments to other US companies are domestic to the US. Both hold at once, and any structure sold to you on the basis that the first stops being true is a structure to decline.
The direction of the money, which most guides get backwards
This is the part worth reading twice, because it is where Egyptian founders make the expensive mistake.
The IRS publishes US–Egypt income-tax treaty documents for the 1980 agreement. A treaty exists in the IRS repository, and treaties allocate taxing rights between two countries.
Now, when do US withholding questions arise for you? When you are receiving US-source income. That is when treaty-reduced rates and a correctly completed W-8BEN or W-8BEN-E are the live issues.
When you are paying a US company for services performed outside the United States, US withholding is generally not the issue at all — that income is generally foreign-source. The two directions get conflated constantly, and the result is founders filling in withholding forms for transactions that never needed them, or worse, assuming that because a treaty exists their payment is somehow pre-cleared.
How the 1980 agreement applies to your particular income type is a question for the treaty text and a cross-border adviser. Existence of a treaty is not an answer to anything on its own.
On Egyptian domestic tax: the Egyptian Tax Authority publishes Income Tax Law No. 91 of 2005, and the current residence provisions, rates, corporate framework and any controlled-foreign-company treatment are the ETA's to state. This guide states none of them, because they turn on current law applied to your facts rather than on anything a guide can settle. If you are running a US entity from Cairo, that is a question to put to an Egyptian adviser before you form, not after.
What you can actually use to pay
Here is where the plan meets reality, and the reality for Egypt is narrow.
Stripe, Wise, Airwallex and Shopify Payments are all unavailable. PayPal and Payoneer are accepted. Mercury is not on a restricted list, which means Egypt is not excluded and your application is still Mercury's decision. Relay requires the US entity formed first — a sequencing instruction, not a rejection.
Four of the eight providers most guides recommend by default are closed to you. That is the single most practically useful thing on this page, because it means a payment stack designed for a Spanish or Irish founder will fail for you at the second step.
Design around what will take you. PayPal and Payoneer on the collection side, a US business account once the entity exists, and your Egyptian bank for the outward leg under Law 194/2020.
Check before you rely on this: provider country policies change without announcement. Verify each one directly before you build anything on it.
Domestically, the CBE identifies the national payment network that InstaPay runs on, and InstaPay handles inbound transfers. Egypt's domestic rails are genuinely capable. That capability does not extend across the border, and the two facts are unrelated — do not read a fast domestic system as evidence of easy international payment.
What I will not help you do
Because the process is documented and the channel is prescribed, Egypt is a market where founders get offered workarounds. Splitting transfers to stay under a notional radar. Using a friend's account abroad. Informal conversion outside the banking system. Moving value out through crypto and calling it something else.
We refuse all of it, and the reason is practical as well as legal. Your outward transfer through an authorised bank, with the right purpose code and a receipt, is the thing that makes your US banking work. A US bank will ask where your funding came from. A documented answer under a named statute is a good answer. An informal one is how accounts get frozen after they have been opened.
What Egyptian founders get wrong
Reading "no restriction" in Article 212 as "no process." The permission is conditioned on the channel — through authorised banks — and the channel has requirements. The restriction was removed; the documentation was not.
Choosing a purpose-of-payment code to make the transfer easier rather than to describe it accurately. This is the most common self-inflicted delay available to an Egyptian founder, and it is worse than a slow transfer because a mismatched code invites scrutiny of everything else.
Assuming a US treaty means their outbound payment has a withholding question. The 1980 agreement is in the IRS repository, and withholding arises on US-source income you receive. Paying a US company for work done outside the US is generally not that.
Planning a payment stack around Stripe or Wise. Both are unavailable. Founders build a plan, get to the onboarding step, and discover it at the worst moment.
Treating InstaPay's domestic speed as an indicator of cross-border ease. InstaPay handles inbound transfers and the network it runs on is domestic infrastructure. Your outward wire to a US bank follows an entirely different process.
The practical sequence
Before you send anything. Establish with your bank which purpose-of-payment code fits your transaction, in writing if you can get it. Have the invoice or contract the payment answers to. Decide whether what you are doing is a supplier payment, a services payment or a capital contribution, because they are not the same transaction and should not carry the same code.
The first transfer. Send it through an authorised bank. Keep the wire receipt, the purpose code and the underlying document together. Expect your bank's own anti-money-laundering questions and answer them plainly.
Building the US side. Form the entity, get the EIN, then apply to providers — Relay in particular will not onboard you before the company exists. Get the ITIN if your situation requires one; that is Form W-7 direct to the IRS.
Ongoing. Keep the same documentary discipline on every transfer. A consistent, explicable pattern of payments is worth more to a US bank than any single well-prepared application.
When you don't need us
If your transaction is a straightforward supplier payment and your bank has told you the code, do it yourself. An intermediary adds nothing to a documented wire.
The ITIN is Form W-7 to the IRS, and simple cases do not need help.
And ask your own bank about your purpose code. They are the ones reporting the transaction and they will tell you what fits.
Where help earns its cost is the US entity, the EIN, and knowing which providers will accept an Egypt-connected founder before you spend applications finding out — because with four of the main eight unavailable, that knowledge is worth something.
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 paying a US company from abroad, opening a US business bank account as a non-resident and building US credit as a foreigner.