Nowadays offshore banking institutions are exempted from taxes, stamp duties and fees. This creates a new industry of banking services for the customers that is tax-free and at the same time provides anonymity, confidentiality and bank secrecy. Offshore banks are reputable entities with long record of successful activities and they reside in major tax havens: Seychelles, Bahamas, Cayman Islands, Isle of Man, Jersey, Guernsey, Singapore, Hong Kong, Bermuda, Bahrain, Belize, Luxembourg, Labuan, Gibraltar, Cyprus, Malta, Andorra, Anguilla, etc.
Largest and important tax havens are in three regions: Caribbean, Europe and Pacific. Legislation and regulations of these tax havens in many cases greatly differ from each other. Some regulations may be attractive for some customers, while others for some other customers. Customers make a analysis of the environment of each haven before making a choice, therefore offshore banking centers are in a constant competition towards one another.
Offshore banks are established in number of leading and relatively new offshore banking centers and tax havens. To operate legally banking institutions are required to acquire offshore banking license. Different tax havens require different conditions for granting offshore banking license, but most of them require minimum capital equivalent to several hundreds of millions of US dollars that are generally deposited to before license is granted.
There are two basic types of offshore banking licenses; however they can further divided into numerous subcategories:
General bank license is the one provided by most offshore banking centers for rendering full banking services to the 
public. A bank with general bank license behaves as an onshore banking unit; it receives deposits, provides loans and conducts ordinary banking services to residents and non-residents. Despite the fact that general bank license permits dealing with residents and non-residents, in most of the countries activities of banks having such license is concentrated on dealing only with non-residents (offshore banking services). Such kinds of banks are founded for providing commercial banking services to the customers for in offshore regime.
Restrictive bank license restricts activities of a bank to certain territory, certain currency and certain group of individuals. Typically banks having restrictive bank license cannot receive deposits from the public and can only provide services to those entities that are allowed by bank license.
Companies owning offshore banking licenses are ideal tool for provision of loans and other credit-financing services, providing bank accounts protected by bank secrecy norms, tax planning, cash flow management, issuing bonds and guarantees, etc.