Estonia, EU – Baltic States, Internet, Technology, USA

The paper said it has taken Estonia too long to create a space of laws necessary for a better business environment.

Stripe presented its Atlas service at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The concept of the service is very similar to that of the Estonian e-residency project and Stripe already has built a service platform for Atlas, which includes the possibility to register a business in the United States, open a bank account, get legal counseling, and use payment systems.

Taavi Kotka, the initiator and driving force behind the Estonian e-residency project, said the people behind the Estonian project have anticipated the arrival of a rival service on the market for a long time.

"The number of people who are selling their know-how and products internationally has skyrocketed globally in recent years. There are tens of millions of such people already. These people need a comfortable business environment for their business and they are looking around, since as a rule the country where they live is not offering simple and convenient solutions," Kotka said.

"I'm very deeply concerned over it that Estonia is not as fast and flexible any more as we thought a year or two ago. It isn't possible to remain competitive globally when even a minor change in regulation takes at least a year. While we mustn't rush things of course, no one forbids us from being more flexible and making changes to laws when necessary. Also members of the Riigikogu should be displaying more enthusiasm in this. Right now the usual attitude in the public sector is that in order to avoid making mistakes, it's best to do nothing," Kotka said.

"One big difference between Stripe and the e-residency program is that as a country we can better influence our environment than Stripe can influence the environment of the U.S.A. Whatever international business brings with it the subject of taxes, and in this we can be significantly more capable than Stripe can in conjunction with the U.S. states," Kotka said of the Estonian e-residency project.