Opening a Serbian Company as a Nepali Citizen

The visa position on a Nepali passport

The ministry's Nepal visa-regime page states plainly that visas are required for holders of ordinary passports and other travel documents. There is no note, warning or exception on the page, and no long-stay carve-out hidden in it. Plan on needing a visa.

That single fact decides your route. The official single-permit guidance says that if a foreign citizen needs a visa to enter Serbia, they apply for a Visa D on the grounds of employment. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs adds the other half: a short-stay visa is not grounds to apply for temporary residence unless the Law provides otherwise, and a foreign national who needs a visa and intends to apply for temporary residence must obtain a long-stay visa.

There is one situation where you can enter without applying to a Serbian mission. The ministry states that holders of a valid Schengen, UK or EU Member State visa, or a visa of the United States, may enter, transit and stay in Serbia for up to 90 days in any 180-day period without a prior visa application, and only within the validity of that visa. Residence permits are covered as well, but only those issued by Schengen countries, EU Member States or the United States. The United Kingdom appears on the visa side of that list only, so a UK residence permit on its own does not put you inside the carve-out.

Read what that entitlement is and is not. It is a short-stay permission to enter. The official pages we read do not say whether arriving that way can lead into a residence application, and the single-permit page's line about applying on arrival is written for people who can enter without a visa without naming any nationality. Do not build a relocation plan on the carve-out without confirming it first with the competent mission.

Applying through New Delhi, and why your country of residence matters

The Nepal visa-regime page confirms the visa requirement but names no competent mission, so the jurisdiction has to come from the embassy itself. The Serbian Embassy in New Delhi is resident in India and states that it additionally covers Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, the Maldives and Bhutan on a non-residential basis. Nepal is named there in so many words.

Now the limit of that. The New Delhi page states diplomatic coverage, not visa competence in those terms, and it does not set out an application procedure for each country it covers. The general rule on the D visa pages points the same way, that you apply at the mission competent for your country of residence and at a non-residential mission where there is none in your own country, but a general rule and a written confirmation from the embassy are different things. Write to New Delhi and get it in writing that your application will be accepted there before you book travel or pay a fee.

Where you legally live counts as much as which passport you hold. The rule keys to your country of residence, so a Nepali citizen legally resident in the Gulf, in Europe or elsewhere may be dealing with an entirely different mission. Tell us where you actually live when you write to us, because it changes the answer more often than nationality does.

One note on how current any of this is. We read the ministry's Nepal page on 10 August 2026 and found no last-updated stamp on it, which is why we publish the date we read it rather than treating the page as current by default. Visa regimes and consular arrangements change without announcement, and the burden of checking sits with whoever is buying the ticket.

• Applications can be lodged online through the portal or in person at a diplomatic or consular mission.
• Each person entered in a passport submits a separate application.
• If you are already abroad, you apply locally with documentation showing the urgency of the case.

The documents the D visa employment page lists

The official D visa page for the employment purpose splits employment into ten sub-grounds, each with its own document set. Self-employment is one of them. Five items recur across every sub-ground, and the self-employment set adds three more.

Two warnings before you print anything off. These are category labels rather than the page's exact legal wording, so check them field by field against the live page at the time you apply, and the sub-ground you fall under changes the list materially. Whether documents need certified translation, notarisation or an apostille is not stated on that page, and neither is the fee amount, so ask the mission rather than guessing. If you want the same list with the full reasoning, it is set out in the D visa guide for business owners.

• The completed visa application form, in the online application or printed if you apply at a mission.
• A valid passport, with validity running at least 90 days beyond your intended departure date.
• A photograph of the applicant.
• Proof that the application fee has been paid.
• An invitation letter.
• For self-employment specifically, the page additionally names the Serbian registration certificate, an authorisation or power of attorney where a representative applies, and a landlord or accommodation statement.

From the visa to a residence and work permit

Serbia's temporary-residence page lists the bases on which residence can be requested, and self-employment sits under the employment basis, handled through the combined residence and work permit. Note what is not on that list: business owner and company founder are not grounds of their own, and investor and start-up are separate labels that the portal does not define as meaning company ownership.

The single permit covers residence and work together. A properly completed request is resolved within 15 days from the date of submission, which is a clock that starts when the file is complete rather than when you first send something in. A permit may be issued for up to three years per request, and the official pages give no criteria for who receives the full term, so never plan on three years as the normal outcome. An extension is filed no earlier than three months before expiry and no later than the expiry date, and filing on time lets you remain in the country while the procedure runs.

There is a step you cannot do from Kathmandu. Serbia's temporary-residence guidance states that once the conditions for issuing the permit are met, the applicant must appear in person at the competent authority so biometric data can be collected. Plan your travel around it. The single permit guide sets out the sequence in more detail.

One planning point that is genuinely unsettled. If you enter on a D visa and then apply for temporary residence, plan on continuing on the same basis the visa was issued on. If you need to change basis, confirm it with the Ministry of the Interior before you act, because the official portal is not consistent on this point: its temporary-residence page says the request may be made only on the same basis as the visa, while its Visa D page says you can apply on the same grounds without saying that you must.

Longer term, permanent residence has its own rules, starting from three years of continuous residence counted on approved temporary residence or an issued single permit. The conditions, the absence limits and the filing window are in the permanent residence guide.

The company itself, and what it costs

The company part is the straightforward part, and the fees are public. Registering a sole trader with APR costs 2.500 dinars and a d.o.o. costs 8.000 dinars. The minimum share capital for a d.o.o. is 100 dinars, which is not a barrier and does not have to be paid in immediately.

The form you choose changes your tax position more than your immigration position. A flat-rate sole trader is the cheapest and simplest option and is available up to 6.000.000 dinars of turnover a year, while VAT registration starts at 8.000.000 dinars over 12 months, and those are two separate thresholds that people routinely confuse. A d.o.o. protects personal assets and suits partners and growth, but profit you take out is taxed twice. The trade-offs are laid out in the guide to choosing a legal form.

Ongoing bookkeeping starts at 6.900 dinars a month for a flat-rate sole trader and 18.500 dinars a month for a company. What moves those numbers is on the pricing page, and you can sanity check a flat-rate figure yourself with the flat-rate calculator.

Most of the registration work can be prepared before you arrive, and we handle company formation and the filings that follow it. What cannot be done from abroad is the biometric step for the permit, and in practice the bank appointment. We would rather tell you that at the start than sell you a package built on the opposite claim.

The company bank account

After the company is registered you need to open a business account at a bank. Serbia's official guidance says you will most often need the registration decision, the tax identification number certificate, a notary-certified OP form, a card of deposited signatures, and a signed contract. That list is hedged on the official page itself, the OP form requirement is stated to depend from bank to bank, and you are told to check your chosen bank's own website for the necessary documentation before you go in.

A useful detail if a branch tells you otherwise: companies and entrepreneurs do not need a stamp to open a bank account, and if a bank insists on one, that can be reported to the Government or to the National Bank contact centre.

We prepare the company documentation and coordinate the appointment. The bank decides. Serbia's official guidance on accounts for residents and non-residents, which is the page about individuals rather than companies, is explicit that a bank freely decides on the choice of clients and independently decides whether to enter a business relationship, acting under its own business policy and internal acts that must include risk management measures. The business-account page says nothing either way on that point, so we are telling you which page this comes from rather than presenting it as the rule for company accounts.

The same page states two limits that are worth knowing if you are refused. Banks may not rely on discriminatory grounds such as citizenship, gender or religion, and on the client's written request they must state in writing the reasons for refusing a business relationship. If a bank turns you down, ask for that in writing.

Your personal position is separate from the company's. As a foreign citizen you are a non-resident during your first year of stay under the Law on Foreign Exchange Operations, and someone holding a residence permit or work visa who stays beyond one year becomes a resident. On acquiring resident status you have to notify the bank, which closes the old account and opens a resident one rather than converting it in place. The detail is in the bank account guide for foreign owners.

What Biro Vision does, and what it does not

We are a registered accounting agency in Belgrade. We provide administrative support: company registration and APR filings, the beneficial-owner filing, document coordination including translation and legalisation, application preparation and submission support, and the bookkeeping, payroll and compliance that keep the business real once it exists.

We do not give legal advice, we do not represent anyone before the authorities, and nobody here is a lawyer. We do not issue visas or permits and we do not open bank accounts. Those decisions belong to the Serbian authorities and to the bank, and they are made on their own criteria. If your situation needs advice on the law itself or representation in an appeal, you need a licensed lawyer, and we will say so rather than take the work.