Did you know that you could become an e-resident of Estonia without actually living in Estonia? Estonia, in fact, was the first country to offer e-Residency as of 3 years ago and now has nearly 30,000 people from 139 countries signed up. Estonian e-residents include the likes of Angela Merkel and Barack Obama.
Estonians love to travel and travellers love Estonia. In the ongoing era of digitisation, the majority of jobs could be location-independent in the future. It's also easier now than ever before to attract overseas customers and engage in cross-border business opportunities. E-Residency specialist Adam Rang takes a deeper look into who exactly are the more typical Estonian e-Residents.
Estonia launched its e-Residency programme three years ago so that anyone could apply for a secure government-backed digital identity and gain access to Estonia's e-services, regardless of their physical location. The latest statistics show that the biggest motivation for signing up is the desire to establish a company. Companies established through e-Residency are trusted location-independent EU companies, which can be managed remotely from anywhere with low costs, minimal hassle and access to all the tools needed to grow globally, such as international payment providers. Today, more than 4,000 companies are run by e-residents, making a significant contribution to the Estonian economy.
Almost 30,000 people from 139 countries call themselves Estonian e-residents.
Photo by: Rasmus Jurkatam
Digital nomads make up a sizeable demographic of Estonia's e-residents, including contract workers, freelancers, entrepreneurs and even self-employed expats who may stay for years in one place before wanting to move their company to another country or back to home. One of the largest growing pools of Estonian e-residents is currently coming from outside of the EU. Overseas entrepreneurs who wish to gain access to the EU market and benefit from its legal framework, can access financial services and build a higher level of trust when conducting business globally. But it's not only overseas entrepreneurs that benefit from Estonia's e-Residency programme. EU-based entrepreneurs are the most common applicants of Estonian e-Residency, benefitting from hassle-free e-services and lower costs of running a business. The programme also attracts the attention of the startup community. The flexibility of the e-Residency programme allows entrepreneurs to source talent globally, and keep their options open as they scale up.
Read more about Estonia's current e-Residents: Who are Estonia's e-residents?
