Hiya folks! I worked with the team on this; happy to answer any questions you have.
I think (b) in particular is not considered by many who look at Stripe Atlas. I consider it a tremendous risk.
I just did my own LLC in MI, too—two hours and $50.
I'm wonder if a US LLC would be better for me? I'm a mISV in Canada. I use Stripe & PayPal and make almost enough to live on. I have a US bank account but Canadian everything else (sole proprietorship, business license, tax id, citizenship, etc.). I don't plan on ever being funded, selling the business, taking on partners or making more than a 150k/yr.
Any kind of corporation (US or Canadian) is much more effort, both from legal and accounting perspectives. It's worth it if you need legal protections a corporation gives you or care for some of the tax advantages. But it comes at the cost of extra effort in managing the complexities if a corporation.
However, if a marketplace came with the application. To use a 3rd party for all that comes with it. IOW, not wanting to use Stripe Connect for various reasons that make sense to the business.
(We in fact go further than that; Atlas actively goes out of our way to help our companies take payments outside of Stripe, for example getting paperwork together to e.g. publish apps on the App Store.)
Speaking broadly: You can always work with lawyers/accountants to see about the feasibility of converting your C corp into an LLC. We just haven't worked to specifically enable it in the fashion that we attempted to smooth out LLC-to-C-corp.
My use case is that I used Atlas to incorporate quickly -- which was lovely -- but the business is turning out to be a solo venture and the C Corp is overkill.
The real user need is a way to reduce business operations time and cost for a small biz.
(not a tax advisor / CPA, talk to one for actual specifics)
(It's under Business Details in your Stripe Dashboard; same process as usual.)
If I'm going to trust my accounts anywhere, I like to know at least something about their business operations. Azlo is completely fee-free according to their FAQ. They also say they require zero minimum balance and have no ATM fees at 55,000 partner ATMs nationwide. That raises some serious red flags to me. Either they make money from fees or they make money on the interest of your minimum balance, but somehow they have to make money. Of course they're low overhead with no branches and no owned ATMs, but they're not cost-less.
What's the catch? Are they going out of business when the VC/Partner money dries up, or are they aiming to get you hooked and then jack up fees afterwards or what's the deal?
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interchange_fee
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interchange_fee#/media/File:Ga...
As long as they've set up their underlying tech stack such that the marginal cost of an extra account is nearly zero, then offering accounts with no fees or minimum balances is useful way of attracting customers, many of whom will grow into good sources of revenue.
Also, we are a banking platform built for developers. Tech-savvy customers will have access to their accounts through our recently announced API portal https://www.azlo.com/tech/ (scroll down to 'Coming soon')
Hope you give us a shot and provide feedback for our API beta!
If you are in the market, I hope you check us out. If you aren't, tell your friends!
They probably make a lot of money on transaction fees (charging merchants when you use your debit card) and loaning your money to other customers at interest.