Opening a Serbian Company as a Nigerian Citizen

The company and your stay are two different applications

Almost every costly mistake starts by treating these as one process. Registering a company with the Business Registers Agency (APR) is a commercial filing that can be completed while you are in Nigeria. Permission to enter Serbia and live here is an immigration decision, taken by different authorities, on different evidence, on its own timeline.

Serbia's official guidance for foreign business owners states the link plainly: setting up a company is a valid purpose of residence, but on its own it does not guarantee that a visa or a residence and work permit will be granted. Plan the company on business grounds, because it has to stand up as a business either way, and treat the permit as a separate application that can be refused.

You can also own a Serbian company and never apply for residence at all. Many owners run one from abroad and simply visit. Residence only becomes necessary when you intend to live in Serbia or to work in the company yourself.

What a Nigerian passport means for entry

The Serbian Ministry of Foreign Affairs publishes a visa regime page for each country. The Nigeria page marks visas as required for holders of ordinary passports and other travel documents, and also for holders of diplomatic and official passports. Some country pages carry a short visa-free allowance for diplomatic and official travel; the Nigeria page does not, so nothing on it can be read as a concession for a private founder.

There is one route around a Serbian visa for short trips, and it depends on what is already in your passport. Holders of a valid Schengen, EU Member State or United Kingdom 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 applying for a Serbian visa, and only within the validity of that other visa. Residence permits count too, but only those issued by Schengen countries, EU Member States or the United States. A United Kingdom residence permit is not on that list, so a Nigerian national living in the UK on a residence permit alone is not covered by it.

Useful for a scouting trip, but it does not solve a long stay. The ministry states that a short-term visa is not grounds to apply for temporary residence unless the Law provides otherwise, and that a foreign national who needs a visa and intends to apply for temporary residence must obtain a long-term visa. Read that before you buy a ticket on the assumption that a short trip can be converted after you land.

Where a Nigerian applicant applies

Nigeria is better served than several countries in this cluster: the Serbian Ministry of Foreign Affairs lists a resident Embassy of Serbia in Abuja, in the Maitama District, headed by a Charge d'Affaires, with a separate consular telephone line. That is the mission to contact.

Honorary consulates are also listed in Lagos and Kano. We are not sending you to either, and neither is the ministry. The official page lists them without saying they issue visas or accept visa applications, so treat them as representation rather than as a consular counter and put every visa question to Abuja.

One caveat is worth stating because it is the reason this page hedges. The mission page lists the embassy but never uses the words competent for visa applications, and the Nigeria visa regime page names no mission at all. So call or write to the consular section in Abuja, confirm that it receives applications of your type, ask which channel it wants and what it expects from a Nigerian applicant, and do that before you pay a fee or book internal travel.

The general rule behind the route is published. A D visa application can be made through the online form on the government portal or in person at a Serbian diplomatic or consular mission. You apply at the mission competent for your country of residence, and where there is no Serbian mission in your country you apply at a mission covering it on a non-residential basis. Each person entered in a passport files a separate application, so a spouse and children are not carried on yours.

On timing, the official guidance asks applicants to apply at least three months before they intend to travel. No decision or processing time is published for a D visa anywhere in the official material we checked, so treat those three months as the lead time the state asks of you, not as a promise about when an answer arrives. The portal also posts notices when C and D visa submission is temporarily unavailable, which is another reason not to leave an online submission to the last day.

The self-employment route, in order

Because a Nigerian passport needs a visa to enter, the official single-permit page puts you on the D visa first, applied for on the grounds of employment. Self-employment appears under employment as one of the closer reasons on the temporary residence page, handled through the combined residence and work permit rather than as a basis of its own.

A D visa allows a stay of minimum 90 and maximum 180 days and allows multiple entries. On an employment basis it also carries work rights: the official page states that such a D visa serves as a work permit and lets the holder begin working immediately on arrival.

The single permit is one permit covering both residence and work. It can be issued for up to three years, although nothing official says three years is the normal grant, and a properly completed request is resolved within 15 days from the date it is submitted. Note the qualifier: those 15 days run from a properly completed request, which is not the same as 15 days from your first attempt. The single permit for self-employment is covered in detail here.

One in-person step is confirmed for temporary residence. Once the conditions for issuing the permit are met, you must appear in person at the competent authority so biometric data can be collected. Build that trip into the plan rather than discovering it late.

The official document page splits employment into ten sub-grounds, each with its own document set. Five items recur across all of them, and self-employment adds three more.

• A 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 was paid
• An invitation letter
• For self-employment specifically, the page additionally names a registration certificate, an authorisation or power of attorney, and a landlord or accommodation statement

Two things that catch founders out

First, the document names above are category labels rather than the exact legal wording of the official page, and the sub-ground you fall under changes the list materially. Self-employment, employment under a contract and independent professional are three different sets. Check every item against the live page or with the embassy before you spend money on translation and legalisation. The official page does not state the fee amount, nor whether documents need translation, notarisation or legalisation, so those answers have to come from the mission.

Second, the basis you enter on matters later. If you arrive on a D visa and then apply for temporary residence, plan on continuing on the same basis. If you need to change basis, confirm with the Ministry of Interior first, because the official portal is not consistent on this point: one government page states that a residence request may be made only on the same basis as the D visa, while another states permissively that you can apply on the same grounds. We will not publish either version as the rule while the sources disagree.

It is also worth knowing what is not on the official list of residence bases. The temporary residence page lists employment, education, investor, Serbian origin, start-up, talent, property owner, family reunification, independent stay, religious service and medical treatment. Business owner and company founder are not on it. Investor and start-up are separate labels the portal does not define as meaning the same thing as owning a company.

Registering the company from Nigeria

A foreign citizen can own 100 per cent of a Serbian company. Serbian residence, citizenship and a local partner are all unnecessary, and the registration does not depend on your immigration status.

With a special power of attorney signed in Nigeria, notarised and legalised for use in Serbia, we prepare and file the APR application. You still come to Serbia for a physical KES/QES and bank identification; cloud KES is not offered. Biro Vision's formation fee is €500; APR, KES, translation, notary, legalisation, travel and every other official or third-party cost are separate.

A clean application is usually decided by APR within a few working days. Allow one to two weeks end to end once document preparation, translation and the bank appointment are counted, and longer if documents have to travel between Nigeria and Serbia for legalisation. A d.o.o. must also record its beneficial owner within 30 days of registration.

Whether a sole trader or a d.o.o. suits you is a business question rather than an immigration one, and the two forms differ in liability, cost and tax treatment. The comparison is here.

Documents issued in Nigeria

Serbian authorities and banks work in Serbian. Anything issued in Nigeria, from a birth certificate to a corporate extract or a power of attorney, will need translation by a court interpreter and will need to be legalised so that Serbia accepts it as genuine.

Confirm which legalisation route applies to Nigerian documents before you pay for anything, because it decides both the cost and the calendar. Ask the Serbian Embassy in Abuja, or the Nigerian authority issuing the document, whether an apostille is accepted or full consular legalisation is required. We have not found an official Serbian page that answers this for Nigeria, and we would rather point you at the competent authority than guess with your money.

One practical detail that costs people weeks: your name must be spelled identically across your passport, the power of attorney, the company documents and the bank paperwork. A middle name that appears in one document and not another is enough to send a filing back. Fix the spelling once, at the very start, and keep it identical everywhere.

The bank account, and what every foreign-owned company prepares

We prepare the company documentation and coordinate the appointment. The bank decides. Serbia's official guidance is explicit that a bank freely chooses its clients and independently decides whether to enter a business relationship, under its own business policy and its internal acts, which must include risk management measures. That passage sits on the government page about accounts for residents and non-residents, which deals with accounts held by individuals rather than by companies, so read it as the principle Serbian banks work to rather than as a rule written for your company account.

Two limits are stated alongside it, and they matter. A bank may not rely on discriminatory grounds such as citizenship, gender or religion. And on the client's written request, it must state in writing the reasons for refusing a business relationship. If you are refused, ask for those reasons in writing before you move to the next bank.

The document side is the same for every foreign-owned Serbian company, whatever passport the owner holds. After registering the company you open a business account, and the official page lists what you will most often need: the registration decision, the TIN certificate, a notary-certified OP form, a card of deposited signatures, and a signed contract. The OP form requirement is stated to vary from bank to bank, and the page tells you to check your chosen bank's own website for its documentation before going in. A company stamp is not needed to open an account, and if a bank insists on one, that can be reported to the Government or the National Bank contact centre.

Separately, on the individuals page, the anti-money-laundering law is described as requiring the bank to establish your name, your date and place of birth, your residence, and the type, number, issuer, and date and place of issue of your identity document. Have a passport that is comfortably in date and a proof of address you can produce on request, and the identity step is routine.

Two things remain under the bank's control. Official guidance does not address remote company-account opening; our workflow requires the foreign director to attend identification in Serbia, and the bank decides on the account. The banking pages also do not publish a complete company-document list, so obtain the chosen bank's current list in writing and prepare exactly that. What to expect from Serbian banks as a foreign owner is covered separately.

What the company costs to run once it exists

A Serbian company has filing obligations whether or not it trades, so bookkeeping starts in the month of registration, not in the month of the first invoice. Our published prices start at 6,900 dinars a month for a flat-rate sole trader and 18,500 dinars a month for a company keeping full books.

A d.o.o. pays 15 per cent profit tax, and a further 15 per cent applies to a dividend when the owner takes profit out. Two thresholds matter early as well: VAT registration becomes mandatory once turnover passes 8,000,000 dinars in 12 months, and a sole trader keeps the flat-rate regime only while annual turnover stays under 6,000,000 dinars. A calculator for both limits is here.

If you intend to draw a salary from the company, or to employ anyone in Serbia, payroll and contributions are their own monthly cycle. What a foreign-owned company actually pays is set out on its own page. Ongoing bookkeeping explains what we handle each month.

A genuine business, and why the authorities care

Serbia's guidance treats company formation as a valid purpose of residence, and equally states that on its own it does not guarantee a visa or a residence and work permit. What sits behind that sentence is the question of whether the business is real. A registered company that never trades, has no clients and files nothing is not a route to residence, and the authorities assess the genuine purpose of the stay.

That is why bookkeeping is part of the immigration picture rather than an afterthought. Invoices, bank movement, filed returns and, if you hire, payroll are what show a company is actually operating. If your plan is to register something dormant and rely on it for status, we are the wrong firm, and we would rather say so now than after you have paid.

Be equally careful with the claims made around this subject online. A Serbian company does not give you EU or Schengen residence, Serbia is not an EU member state, and buying or registering a company is not a route to Serbian citizenship. Anyone advertising guaranteed approval, an approval rate or a permit without a real business behind it is describing something that does not exist.

What we do, and what we do not do

Biro Vision is an accounting firm in Belgrade. We provide administrative support: company registration and APR filings, document coordination, translation and legalisation logistics, application preparation, and the bookkeeping that follows registration. That is the whole of the offer, written plainly so you do not assume more.

We are not lawyers. We do not give legal advice, we do not act as your legal representative, and we do not obtain visas or permits. We do not place workers, sponsor employment or sell job offers, so if you are looking for a job in Serbia rather than a business to run, nothing on this page will help you.

If the honest answer for your situation is that the route does not work, you will get that answer at the assessment rather than after a company has been registered. Tell us your situation and we will map the sequence and the costs first.