ℹ️ What’s a GbR?
GbR is the abbreviation for “Gesellschaft bürgerlichen Rechts” (= corporation under civil law) and is a civil law partnership of individuals or enterprises with a joint contractual purpose. It’s the simplest and most general form of partnership under German corporate law.
GbRs need to define a joint purpose (activity), which is recorded in a trade license (”Gewerbeschein”) or within a written partnership agreement. The purpose of a GbR is usually a business purpose, but they can also have private purposes.
A GbR partnership requires at least two members, referred to as partners. All partners represent the GbR with equal rights and they are jointly liable with their private assets for debts incurred by any member of the partnership.
⚠️ What’s important to know before opening and while operating a Qonto GbR account?
Before opening a Qonto account, be aware of the below specificities for GbR accounts. By opening your account, you acknowledge and accept the following as an addendum to our general terms and conditions:
Qonto only accepts GbRs with a business purpose and whose partners are all natural persons.
The GbR needs to have been registered at the local trade office (”Gewerbeamt”) and a tax number (”Steuernummer”) needs to have been assigned.
Only one person – usually one of the partners – can have the role of account owner. If a non-partner is opening and managing the account on behalf of the partners, they need to provide a delegation of power, signed by all partners and dated no more than three months ago.
All partners are required to provide proof of identity by uploading a copy of their ID or passport and a live video recording prior to the activation of the account. In case the account owner has a delegation of power from all partners, only the account owner is required to provide a live video recording.
Partners who are not the account owner will not have access to the account by default. However, the account owner can invite them as soon as the account becomes operative. It’s therefore recommended to choose a team plan that allows at least as many users as there are partners. If the maximum amount of users is reached, the plan can be upgraded or extra members be added for €5 per member per month (not possible for single-user plans).
Any partner who is invited to and able to access the account will need to be granted admin rights. Admins have access to the same functionality as the account owner, with the exception of changing the subscription plan and deactivating the access of other admins.
A request to close the account can be placed by any partner, however the agreement of all partners is needed in order to complete the closure request (unless the request is made by the account owner with a delegation of power from all partners). In order to request the account closure, contact our customer support team and send them copies of the closure agreement (link to be added soon) from each of the partners.
📃 Which documents does Qonto require to open a GbR account?
Proof of identity
All GbR partners will need to provide a valid proof of identity, i.e. a copy of their ID or passport. Which documents we accept as proof of identity can be read here: What kind of identity documents are accepted by Qonto?
Proof of partnership
As documentation of the partnership, one of the following needs to be provided:
Business license (”Gewerbeschein”)
This document is received when the GbR is registered at the local trade office. Please find an example below:
Each partner should have their own copy of this document. Only one of these copies from any of the partners is necessary to upload.
Partnership agreement
Informal written agreement which, apart from mentioning all partners, needs to include a description of the business purpose, have a date and must be signed by all partners. Furthermore, it should make provisions about the structure of the GbR, such as:
Share in company assets
Profit and loss distribution in the GbR
Rights and Duties of the shareholders
Liability of the company
Voting rights and passing of resolutions
Remuneration and withdrawal
Termination by shareholder
Dissolution of the company
The above are mentioned merely for orientational purposes, i.e. it’s recommended to outline these topics, but not mandatory to include them all. If you do not have a partnership agreement yet, we recommend to print out and use our partnership agreement template.
⚠️ Important: Please ensure that all documents are uploaded in sufficient quality (resolution, readability, completeness). We recommend taking pictures with a smartphone and taking care of the following:
✅ DOs | ❌ DONTs |
high quality/resolution | blurry/pixelated |
indirect and sufficient lighting | light reflexes (e.g. from scanner or flash) |
all edges and corners visible | missing pages |
complete and readable information | screenshots or pictures of secondary displays |