Hey dobbsbob, thanks for your comment! Great info! I did try getting a Latvian bank account but even their banks seem to have clamped down on opening accounts for non-EU residents due to money laundering laws - at least in my experience.
As for payment gateways, I wanted to stick to well-known gateways like PayPal and Skrill that consumers would already have accounts with.
I'm sure that walking into a bank in Europe probably would have quickly resulted in the opening of an account, but getting to Europe posed a problem for me as I'm based in the US and didn't have the funds to make the trip. Thus, Bitcoin!
Payment gateways all take Skrill or Paypal. Just find one that doesn't charge a minimum fee per month (there's a few left that don't). You sign contracts directly with Paypal and the gateway accepts the payment, then drop it in your Okpay or Latvian account.
I also live around a few Chinese banks that opened in my country. Got an Alipay account through them in a couple of minutes by walking inside and depositing $1000 and showing corporate papers. Alipay is Chinese paypal equivalent but no chargebacks (well.. hard to do chargebacks).
There's also companies like The Currency Cloud. Although I'm not sure if this is against their rules but I used them to receive gateway payments as well.
Also I'm not an American, maybe that's why you had problems. Guess things have changed with the new very strict laws
As for payment gateways, I wanted to stick to well-known gateways like PayPal and Skrill that consumers would already have accounts with.
I'm sure that walking into a bank in Europe probably would have quickly resulted in the opening of an account, but getting to Europe posed a problem for me as I'm based in the US and didn't have the funds to make the trip. Thus, Bitcoin!