Opening an Offshore Bank Account in Dubai: What Banks Require and Charge

Two very different things get searched for with the same words. One is a bank account for a company registered in an offshore jurisdiction such as RAK ICC or JAFZA Offshore. The other is a personal or business account for someone who does not live in the UAE. They need different documents, they are assessed by different teams inside a bank, and confusing them is the most common reason an application stalls before it is even read.

This page separates the two, then sets out what a UAE bank actually charges once an account is open, using the published tariffs of banks that make them public.

Offshore company or non-resident: which one applies to you

The word offshore in the UAE has a precise meaning. It refers to a company incorporated under an offshore registry, not to a foreign owner and not to money held abroad.

• An offshore company is registered with RAK International Corporate Centre or JAFZA Offshore. It cannot rent local premises or sponsor residence visas, and it is normally used to hold assets, shares or property rather than to trade inside the UAE.
• A free zone or mainland company is an onshore UAE company. It can trade locally, take an office and sponsor visas. Most business accounts, and every tariff quoted below, are built for these.
• A non-resident applicant is a person without UAE residency. That is a fact about the individual, not about the company, and it can apply to the owner of an onshore company just as easily.

The combinations matter. An offshore company owned by a UAE resident is one case. An onshore free zone company owned by a non-resident is another. An offshore company owned by a non-resident is the hardest of the three, because both the entity and the person raise questions the bank has to answer in writing.

If your company is onshore and you simply live abroad, the page you want is our guide on opening a UAE bank account without residency. The rest of this page is about the offshore entity.

Why offshore applications are treated as higher risk

Nothing about an offshore company is improper, and the registries are UAE bodies operating under UAE law. The difficulty is evidential rather than legal.

• The company has no local premises, no local staff and no local utility record, so the usual proofs of substance do not exist.
• Its activity is often holding rather than trading, which means no invoices, no customers and no obvious flow to explain.
• Ownership frequently sits behind another company or a trust, so the ultimate beneficial owner is two or three steps away.
• The purpose of the account is capital movement, which is exactly the category compliance teams examine most closely.

A bank that declines is not accusing anyone of anything. It is saying the file does not answer its questions, and the fix is to answer them before applying rather than after.

What a bank asks an offshore company for

The list is longer than for an onshore company and the tone is different: every item exists to show that a real business decision sits behind the structure.

1. Certificate of incorporation and the memorandum from RAK ICC or JAFZA, current and attested where the bank asks for it.
2. Certificate of incumbency naming directors and shareholders as at today, not as at incorporation.
3. The full ownership chain up to the natural persons who ultimately own it, with passports for each and an explanation of any corporate layer.
4. A written explanation of why the structure exists: what it holds, why it was set up offshore, and what the account will be used for.
5. Evidence of the underlying assets or business: title deeds, share certificates, contracts, or the accounts of the operating company beneath it.
6. Source of wealth for the owners, which is a different question from source of funds and usually needs several years of history.
7. Expected transaction pattern: counterparties, countries, currencies and monthly volumes, stated as numbers.

The last item is the one applicants prepare least and banks weigh most. An account opened on a stated expectation of two transfers a month that then sees forty will be reviewed, and a review on a thin file is where relationships end.

What it costs once the account is open

Offshore structures move money across borders, so the international transfer charge matters far more than the monthly fee. Every figure below comes from the bank’s own published schedule, retrieved on 10 August 2026.

Sources: ADIB Business Accounts Schedule of Charges V17, applicable from 8 September 2024; Emirates Islamic Business Banking Schedule of Charges; RAKBANK Business Banking Accounts Service and Price Guide, with effect from 18 April 2026; Mashreq NEOBiz Schedule of Charges, version July 2026; Emirates NBD Business Banking Schedule of Charges; DIB Business Banking Schedule of Charges, BB_SOC May 2026 Rev.1; HSBC UAE Corporate Tariff and Charges, July 2026; Zand product schedule; Al Masraf Business Bundles Schedule of Charges. All retrieved 10 August 2026.

Two things in that table are easy to miss. The phrase plus correspondent charges means the published number is not the number you pay: an intermediary bank takes its own cut and neither the amount nor the intermediary is fixed in advance. And the spread on the published part alone runs from AED 15.75 to AED 100, a factor of six on the same instruction.

The monthly fee is the smaller half of the decision

For a holding structure sending, say, eight international payments a month, the transfer line dominates.

• At AED 20 per transfer, eight payments cost AED 160 a month.
• At AED 52.50, the same eight cost AED 420.
• At AED 100, they cost AED 800.

Against those numbers, the difference between a AED 99 and a AED 125 monthly fee is noise. The bank with the highest monthly fee in the table, HSBC at AED 920, is also the one with the international network a cross border structure may actually need, which is a trade rather than a mistake.

The currency question sits alongside it. A structure that receives in dollars or euros and pays out in the same currency should not be converting twice, and the account that avoids that is worth more than a cheaper transfer line. Mashreq prices its NEOBiz Prime tier at AED 25 per international transfer with no monthly fee, while its Pro tier charges AED 50 and AED 99 a month; which is cheaper depends entirely on how many payments you send, and the crossover is around two transfers a month.

What an offshore entity cannot expect from a UAE account

Some capabilities follow the company type rather than the bank, and no amount of preparation changes them.

• No residence visas. An offshore company cannot sponsor them, so the owner cannot obtain UAE residency through it and cannot then get an Emirates ID on that basis.
• Limited local trading. The account is not a route around the restriction on trading inside the UAE, and using it that way puts both the company and the account at risk.
• Credit is unlikely. Facilities, trade finance and cards are relationship products priced against local substance an offshore entity does not have.
• Cash handling is usually restricted or absent, which is consistent with a holding structure and a problem for anything else.

If any of those four matters to the plan, the structure is probably wrong rather than the bank. A free zone company with a small office and one visa answers most of them, and it opens the ordinary product range: RAKBANK RAKstarter at AED 103.95 a month, ADIB Business Connect at AED 125, and the rest of the market on normal terms.

Which banks to approach, and in what order

There is no published list of UAE banks that accept offshore companies, and any page claiming one is guessing. What can be said is which characteristics tend to fit which case.

• A structure with genuine international flows is better matched to a bank with a correspondent network and a corporate desk, such as HSBC or a large national bank.
• A structure holding UAE property or shares is usually simpler at a bank that already knows the underlying asset class.
• A digital first bank is generally the wrong first call for an offshore entity: the fast onboarding those banks are built for assumes a simple, single owner onshore company.
• An Islamic bank is a normal option where the structure is Sharia compliant, and the tariffs above show ADIB and Emirates Islamic among the cheaper on international transfers.

Approach one bank at a time with a complete file. Several simultaneous applications produce several simultaneous refusals, and a refusal is remembered.

Common reasons an offshore application is refused

• The stated purpose of the account and the company activity do not match.
• The ownership chain stops at another company and no natural person is identified.
• Source of wealth is asserted rather than evidenced.
• The structure has no connection to the UAE beyond the registry entry.
• Expected volumes are left vague, or are implausible for the stated activity.

Four of those five are fixed by preparation rather than by choosing a different bank. That is the practical message of this page: the file decides the outcome far more than the logo on the door.

Before you start

Confirm three things in writing, because all three change without notice.

1. That the bank opens accounts for offshore entities at all, and for your registry specifically. RAK ICC and JAFZA Offshore are not always treated alike.
2. The current tariff. The figures here were taken on 10 August 2026 from the documents named above; schedules are reissued regularly.
3. Whether correspondent charges are deducted from the payment or billed to you, which decides whether your counterparty receives the full amount.

To compare the banks themselves, including the licence each holds with the Central Bank and the tariff each publishes, start from the list of UAE business banks and open the page for any bank on the shortlist.