Currently located in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. I'm looking at the prospect of moving (myself and the missus, and the business - web-based) in the next few years. VISA and Mastercard are making online credit card processing more difficult for Canadian-based businesses that utilize third party credit card processors. And hardly a day goes by that VISA has not driven another processor out of business. Merchant account not feasible in Canada as you have to provide a very, very large deposit - and odds of approval are slim for smaller web-based companies like mine. The problem with the IPSP's is that they cannot establish banking relationships in Canada, as required by VISA and Mastercard. I do have one that has gotten around this (in addition to using PayPal as an alternate processor), but others like GloBill and EG Pay had said the same thing - now they, like may others, have closed their doors. Besides, we are looking for a change.

The US and the EU are the options - although the Cook Islands originally appealed to us until I discovered that a dedicated Internet highspeed connection can run you $500-600 per month. The EU is our choice. I have been doing some resesarch on cost of living in a number of EU countries, and come to the conclusion that Canada (and especially Vancouver), compared to the rest of the World, is incredibly cheap to live (relatively and absolutely). So it's a matter of finding a relatively less expensive place to move. Preferably where English and/or French is spoken as first or second language - prefer English, but gf is French-Canadian. One place we have considered is Gibraltar. Looks really nice.

Any thoughts?

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Cheers,

Dan
Founder and CEO

LionsGate Creative
GoodPassRobot
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