Best cashback business credit cards UK: thresholds, caps and what you really earn

The short list

• Limited company or LLP that wants the simplest 1%: Capital on Tap. 1% cashback on every pound, no threshold, no cap, £0 annual fee, 0% non-sterling transaction fee, and unlimited free employee cards. It is the card I use.
• Limited company that wants the same deal from a second lender: iwoca, which pays 1% cashback on all spending, credited to the balance, at £0 a year and 0% (Visa exchange rate) on non-sterling spend. It publishes a representative APR, which Capital on Tap does not.
• Established limited company with a big six months ahead: Funding Circle, which pays 2% cashback for 6 months (capped at £2,000), then 1% uncapped. It needs limited companies only; at least one year trading; £30,000+ turnover.
• Sole trader who spends well over £2,000 every month: Barclaycard Select Cashback, at £0 a year. Santander if you already bank there and accept its £30 fee.
• NatWest customer with heavy fuel or trade-supplies spend: NatWest Business Plus, whose category rates can beat 1% even after its £70 per card fee.
• You would rather collect Avios or Amex points: see points instead of cash; a cashback card is the wrong tool.

Every cashback business credit card compared

Every UK business credit card in our data with cashback in its rewards, Capital on Tap first because it is the card we use. The wording in each cell is the issuer’s, so the conditions sit next to the headline. Cards reviewed on this site link to the review; the rest link to the issuer. Tide’s business credit card is Capital on Tap’s card brokered by Tide, so it is not listed twice.

5 of these cards, Capital on Tap included, have no annual fee at all; the full picture on fees, including the bank cards that waive theirs, is on free business credit cards. NatWest’s standard business card also appears, although its cashback is 1% cashback on fuel and EV charging only, which makes it a fuel card with a rebate rather than a cashback card.

Headline rate vs effective rate

The headline rate is the number in the advert. The effective rate is what you keep, divided by what you spent, over a year. They are the same only on a card with no threshold, no cap, no fee and no categories, and where all your spend is in sterling. Almost every card in the table breaks at least one of those conditions.

Four things drag the effective rate down. Thresholds pay nothing in months below a spending line. Caps stop paying once you have earned a set amount. Annual fees come straight off the cashback, and are often charged per card. Foreign transaction fees are charged on the same spend the cashback is paid on, usually at about three times the rate. Intro rates and category rates can push the effective rate above the headline for a while, or for some kinds of spend, which is why they need modelling rather than guessing.

Worked example: effective cashback at three spend levels

Here is the arithmetic at £1,500, £3,000, £10,000 a month of card spend, for the free-to-hold cards and the main fee-paying ones. Each row shows the card’s own rewards and fee wording, and the assumption we made. It is deliberately simple: all sterling, the same spend every month, one card, no fuel or category spend.

What the numbers show. At £1,500 a month, Barclaycard Select pays £0 because the month never clears its threshold, while Capital on Tap pays £180. Santander’s £30 fee takes its effective rate down to 0.83% at that level. At £10,000 a month, Barclaycard Premium Plus hits its cap and nets £250 after its fee, and NatWest Business Plus at its lowest category rate nets £530. Lloyds and Bank of Scotland pay their base rate only above the threshold, so £180 at £3,000 a month.

Funding Circle is shown at its ongoing rate. In year one its intro rate lifts the total: at £3,000 a month the first year works out at about £540, and at £10,000 a month about £1,800, before settling to the ongoing figure. For your own numbers on Capital on Tap, including Pro and Avios, use the cashback calculator.

Thresholds, caps, intro rates and category rates

Monthly thresholds

Barclaycard Select Cashback pays 1% cashback, uncapped, but only in months when you spend more than £2,000. How it is paid, per the cashback terms: credited to the card account in the same month’s statement; the terms say £2,000 or more in a statement month qualifies. It is a cliff, not a slope: a month just under the line earns nothing, a month just over earns on all of it. For a business with lumpy spend, the effective rate depends on how many months clear the line, which you cannot know in advance. The Barclaycard Select Cashback review goes through the terms.

Lloyds and Bank of Scotland run the same structure on a lower rate: 1% on fuel and EV charging, 0.5% elsewhere, in months you spend £2,000+. Two cards from the same banking group, with the same terms, and both need their own business current account.

Annual caps

Barclaycard Premium Plus pays 0.5% cashback, capped at £400 a year; travel insurance when the trip is paid on the card. NatWest Business Plus caps its cashback per account, not per card: the £600 cap is per account, however many cards you hold; cashback is credited monthly and not paid out in cash. Adding employee cards adds fees but does not raise the cap. Zempler’s limit is monthly and generous: 1% cashback on the first £100,000 of eligible spend a month. Capital on Tap, iwoca, Santander and Barclaycard Select state no cap.

Intro rates

Funding Circle pays 2% cashback for 6 months (capped at £2,000), then 1% uncapped. The support pages add that the 2% rate runs for six months from approval and is capped at £2,000 of cashback. At steady spend the cap only bites above roughly £16,667 a month. After the intro period it is a 1% card like Capital on Tap and iwoca, with 0% on non-sterling spend. One practical difference: its cashback is credited to the card account when you make a statement payment; cannot be paid to a bank account. It also needs a year of trading, which Capital on Tap does not (no minimum trading history). The Funding Circle review has the detail.

Category rates

NatWest Business Plus is the only card here with a proper category ladder: 3% fuel and EV, 2% trade supplies, 1% travel, 0.5% other; capped at £600 a year per account. A trades business spending most of its card budget at builders’ merchants and on fuel could beat 1% comfortably. A software or services business spending mostly on “other” would earn half a percent, pay £70 per card, and hold a card tied to a NatWest current account. Category rates reward you for spending where the bank wants you to, so model your own mix before you choose.

Annual fees and FX fees that eat the cashback

An annual fee is guaranteed; cashback is not. Santander charges £30, and its page says the £30 fee is added when you activate the card and is charged even if you do not use it. At 1%, the first £3,000 of annual spend only pays the fee back. The card is otherwise a good one if you already bank there: 1% cashback, uncapped, paid monthly and 0% on purchases in the local currency. The Santander Business Cashback review covers it. NatWest Business Plus charges £70 per card, and employee cards cost £70 a year per cardholder. Virgin Money is £0 in year one, then £28 per card.

Foreign transaction fees do more damage than annual fees for any business with overseas suppliers, because they scale with the same spend. On £500 a month of dollar software, Barclaycard Select’s 2.99% fee costs about £179.40 a year; 1% cashback on that spend is £60. The cashback on your sterling spend then has to cover the difference. Capital on Tap (0% non-sterling transaction fee), iwoca (0% (Visa exchange rate)), Funding Circle (0%) and NatWest Business Plus (0% on purchases) avoid it. The full list is on business credit cards with no foreign transaction fee.

Capital on Tap’s cashback in detail

Capital on Tap pays 1 point per £1 spent on the card, and 1 point = 1p (1,000 points = £10), which is where the 1% cashback comes from. There is no threshold, no cap and no category list: a coffee and a server bill earn at the same rate. The one haircut is that each transaction rounded down to the nearest pound, so a £9.99 subscription earns 9 points. On a card with many small transactions that trims the effective rate slightly below 1%; on larger invoices it barely registers. There are no points on cash withdrawals or fees.

You can take the points as balance credit, cash, gift cards, Avios, Virgin Points or Radisson Rewards. Cash to a bank account has a £10 minimum for cash to a bank account. If you would rather fly, points convert at 10 points = 8 Avios on the free card. The paid Pro tier (£299 a year) adds 1.25% on preloaded spend (and Daily Repay via Smart Repay), but on ordinary credit spend it earns the same 1% as the free card, so Pro is a travel-perks decision, not a cashback one. Every clause is on the Capital on Tap rewards page.

iwoca deserves a straight mention here, because on cashback it matches Capital on Tap point for point: 1% cashback on all spending, credited to the balance, £0 a year, 0% (Visa exchange rate) on non-sterling spend. It is also limited-company territory (its page says: UK limited company (the FAQ also says partnership), registered at Companies House). The differences lie elsewhere: iwoca publishes a representative APR (35.40% APR representative (variable); rates from 14.99%) and does not allow cash withdrawals, while Capital on Tap advertises rates as low as 13.86% APR (variable), publishes no representative APR, converts points to airline schemes and gives unlimited free employee cards.

Points instead of cash

American Express and British Airways cards pay points, not cash, so they are not in the table above. The American Express Business Gold earns 1 Membership Rewards point per £1 (2 per £1 with Amex Travel), and the British Airways Amex Accelerating Business earns 1.25 Avios per £1 (cut from 1.5 on 7 October 2026); 10,000 bonus Avios per £20,000 spent (up to three times a year). Whether that beats 1% cash depends entirely on how you redeem: points used for flights in a premium cabin can be worth much more than a penny each, and points used for statement credit are usually worth less. Both are also affected by narrower Amex acceptance and, on Gold and Platinum, a charge-card structure. Our guide to Avios for business spend does the valuation, and Amex Business Gold vs Platinum weighs the two charge cards. Capital on Tap sits in between: cash by default, with the option to convert to Avios or Virgin Points.

Cashback, tax and your accounts

How business credit card cashback is treated in your accounts, and whether it has any tax consequence, is a question for your accountant rather than for this site; the answer can depend on your business and on what the spending was for. We do not give tax or accounting advice. Practically, keep the statements that show cashback credited or paid out, so it can be recorded properly, and if your card syncs to your accounting software check how the cashback entries come through.

Who should choose which

If you run a limited company or LLP, spend in more than one currency and have quiet months as well as busy ones, Capital on Tap is the cashback card I would choose, and do. If you are a sole trader it is not available to sole traders; start with the sole trader guide. The wider field, including cards without cashback, is on the best business credit cards UK page.