The $500 is above market rate for an LLC + US bank account. Do you think this cost will be revised down sometime in the future? Another challenge is that some folks can get in serious trouble (ie. imprisonment) with their local government for even having a foreign bank account. This is because local governments see it as a drain of foreign currency reserves like the USD/EUR, which are much needed by the country in question for imports. So this info needs to be kept top secret. What measures does Stripe take to prevent this kind of info from leaking?
Above market rate? As someone who has vigorously engaged in this process for literally years (due to the needs of myself and also my friends), the best I have ever seen is $800, which is the service I ended up using. Do you have any examples to point to?