Capital on Tap vs Amex Business: Gold, Platinum and BA Accelerating compared

At a glance

These four cards solve different problems. Capital on Tap is a general-purpose company credit card: free, simple, accepted wherever Visa is, with cash-equivalent rewards. Amex Business Gold and Platinum are charge cards built around Membership Rewards points and, in Platinum’s case, travel benefits. The British Airways Amex Accelerating Business card is a credit card built around Avios, and it is the only one of the three Amex cards a sole trader can hold.

• Choose Capital on Tap if you want no fee, no FX charge, uncapped 1% and cards for staff, and you are a Ltd, LLP or PLC.
• Choose Amex Business Gold if you already run your spend through Amex-accepting suppliers and want transferable points with a fee-free first year.
• Choose Amex Business Platinum if you will use the travel credit, the lounge access and the statement credits, and can justify £650 a year.
• Choose BA Amex Accelerating Business if you fly British Airways often, or you are a sole trader who wants a rewards card at all.

I use the Capital on Tap free card in my agency and have never held an Amex business card, so what follows on the Amex side is research from Amex’s own pages, checked on 15 September 2026, not first-hand experience.

Four-column comparison

Sources: Capital on Tap’s card page, FAQ and credit agreement; the Amex Business Gold, Amex Business Platinum and BA Amex Accelerating Business product pages; and Amex UK’s page on using your card abroad for the currency conversion fee, which the product pages do not display.

Points vs cashback

Capital on Tap earns 1 point per £1, and 1 point = 1p (1,000 points = £10). You can take that as cash to your bank account (£10 minimum for cash to a bank account), as a credit against your balance, as gift cards, or convert it to Avios, Virgin Points or Radisson Rewards. Each transaction is each transaction rounded down to the nearest pound, so a £9.99 subscription earns 9 points, not 10. There are no points on cash withdrawals or fees. Points points expire after 24 months with no earning or redeeming. That is the whole scheme, and the fact that you can always fall back to cash at 1p per point is what makes it easy to value.

Amex Business Gold and Platinum earn 1 Membership Rewards point per £1 (2 per £1 with Amex Travel). Membership Rewards points do not have a fixed cash value; their worth depends on where you send them. Transferred to an airline scheme they can be worth more than 1p each, redeemed as statement credit typically less. The person who benefits from Amex is the one who already knows which airline or hotel programme they will transfer to. The BA card skips that step and earns Avios directly: 1.5 Avios per £1 until 6 October 2026, then 1.25 Avios per £1; 10,000 bonus Avios per £20,000 spent (up to three times a year).

The comparison that matters is per pound spent, after October. Capital on Tap free: 1p cash, or 0.8 Avios. Capital on Tap Pro: 1p cash, or 1 Avios, for £299 a year. BA Amex Accelerating: 1.25 Avios and nothing else, for £250. Using the industry ball-park of about 1p per Avios, the BA card earns roughly a quarter more per pound than Capital on Tap Pro on flights, but only in Avios and only at merchants that take Amex. Our cashback calculator turns your own monthly spend into points, cash and Avios on both Capital on Tap tiers.

Acceptance: Visa vs Amex

Capital on Tap runs on Visa. American Express runs its own network, and its own notes on the Business Gold page concede that acceptance is narrower than Visa in the UK and abroad. For a business this shows up in three places: small trade suppliers who take cards but not Amex, overseas merchants, and the odd government or utility payment page. Every one of those forces you to keep a second card, which means a second statement, a second feed into your accounts and a second set of employee cards.

There is a second-order effect. Rewards only accrue on what you put through the card. If a fifth of your spend cannot go on Amex, the effective earn rate on your total spend is a fifth lower than the headline. Capital on Tap’s 1% cashback applies to more of your outgoings simply because more places take it, and Bill Pay extends it to suppliers who do not take cards at all, for a fee.

Non-sterling fees: 0% vs 2.99%

Capital on Tap charges 0% non-sterling transaction fee. Amex UK states a currency conversion fee of 2.99% on each foreign currency purchase; that figure is on Amex’s general page about using your card abroad rather than on the three product pages, so treat it as the standard Amex UK rate and confirm it in the summary box of whichever card you apply for.

For a business that pays for US software, runs ads billed in dollars or euros, or buys stock from abroad, this is often the deciding line. On £2,000 a month of non-sterling spend, 2.99% is close to £60 a month, or over £700 a year, before you count any annual fee. Amex points on that spend would have to be worth more than 3p each just to get back to level with a card charging nothing. Put your own figures into the FX fee calculator. Amex cards do earn points on the non-sterling spend, but the fee is charged whether or not you value the points.

Annual fees

Capital on Tap’s free card has £0 annual fee. There are also £0 ATM fee, £0 charge for missing the minimum payment and no over-limit fee (the card is declined instead), and employee cards are unlimited free employee cards. The paid tier, Pro, costs £299 a year and adds unlimited Priority Pass lounge access for the main cardholder, a metal card and 1.25% on preloaded spend (and Daily Repay via Smart Repay); the break-even is worked out on the Pro page. The full fee schedule from the credit agreement is on the fees page.

Amex Business Gold is £0 in year one, then £195. Amex Business Platinum is £650. The BA Accelerating Business card is £250. Employee cards are up to 20 complimentary on Gold, complimentary business gold employee cards plus one complimentary platinum employee card on Platinum, and complimentary on the BA card. Platinum’s fee is offset by credits only if you spend against them: £600 Amex Travel credit, £300 Indeed and £150 Dell statement credits. A business that does not book through Amex Travel, does not hire through Indeed and does not buy Dell hardware is paying £650 for lounges and points.

Charge card vs credit card

Amex Business Gold and Platinum are charge cards. Amex’s pages describe them as pay in full monthly, with an optional Flexible Payment Option that lets you carry part of the balance at a separate purchase rate. Neither page shows a representative APR because the core product is not a credit line. The BA Accelerating Business card is a conventional credit card with a published 104.9% APR representative (variable), including the fee. That number looks alarming because the calculation folds the £250 fee into an assumed low credit limit; the purchase rate itself is much lower, and it is irrelevant if you pay in full.

Capital on Tap is a revolving credit facility. It advertises rates as low as 13.86% APR (variable) and does not publish a representative APR; your rate depends on your personal and business credit history and the Bank of England base rate, and it is made of your fixed business rate plus the Bank of England Bank Rate. There is no interest on purchases if you pay the statement balance in full by the due date. The practical difference from a charge card is that a credit card gives you a stated limit you can plan around and lets you carry a balance in a hard month by choice, whereas a charge card expects settlement whether or not the month was hard.

Two things Amex and Capital on Tap share: a personal guarantee of some form, and no Section 75 protection. Capital on Tap says Section 75 does not apply, because business lending is outside the Consumer Credit Act protections; the Amex pages say the main cardmember is liable for employee card charges. The personal guarantee guide explains what a director is actually signing.

Eligibility and sole traders

Capital on Tap wants a Ltd, LLP or PLC that is active on Companies House, with £24,000 minimum annual turnover, no unsatisfied CCJs in the last 12 months, applied for by an active UK director or a shareholder with 25% or more. There is no minimum trading history. It is not available to sole traders. It runs a soft search on your personal credit file when you apply. Full detail on the eligibility page.

Amex Business Gold: Ltd or LLP only; director or member; £20,000+ personal income. Sole traders are not eligible. Amex Business Platinum: Ltd or LLP only; £35,000+ personal income. Sole traders are not eligible. Those two are therefore no better for a sole trader than Capital on Tap. The BA Accelerating Business card is the exception: Sole traders and small businesses with a UK business bank account; £20,000+ personal income. Amex’s own Gold page points sole traders to it. If you are a sole trader choosing among these four, the BA card is your only option, and the sole trader guide lists what else exists outside Amex.

Note the different shape of the tests. Amex asks about the applicant’s personal income. Capital on Tap asks about the company’s turnover and Companies House status. A newly formed company with a well-paid director may find Amex easier; an established company with a modestly paid director may find Capital on Tap easier.

Welcome and referral bonuses

Amex’s welcome bonuses are larger in headline terms. Business Gold: 20,000 points after £3,000 in 3 months. Business Platinum: 50,000 points after £6,000 in 3 months. BA Accelerating Business: 40,000 Avios after £5,000 in 3 months (offer ends 6 October 2026; normally 30,000). Each requires you to spend the stated amount within three months, so the value depends on whether that spend was going to happen anyway.

Capital on Tap has no public welcome bonus on the free card. What it has instead is a referral scheme: apply through an existing customer’s link or code, make a transaction within 30 days of activating the card, and both the new customer and the referrer receive 7,500 points, worth £75, within one month of the first transaction. The bonus is for brand-new Capital on Tap customers only and must apply through the referral link (or code). Pro has its own welcome offer of 10,000 bonus points when you spend £5,000 in the first 3 months. How the referral works, including the reasons it sometimes does not pay, is on the referral code page.

For balance: American Express also runs a refer-a-friend scheme, and each of the three product pages describes a bonus for an existing cardmember who refers an approved business. We have no Amex referral link and receive nothing if you take an Amex card. The Capital on Tap link on this page is our only commercial relationship, as set out on how we make money.

The 7 October 2026 Avios cut

The BA Accelerating Business card’s product page states that its earn rate is 1.5 Avios per £1 until 6 October 2026, then 1.25 Avios per £1; 10,000 bonus Avios per £20,000 spent (up to three times a year). It also notes that On Business points end on 7 October 2026. Two things follow. First, anyone comparing this card against Capital on Tap Pro should use 1.25 Avios per pound, not 1.5, because the higher rate will be gone within weeks of this page going live. Second, the boosted welcome bonus of 40,000 Avios after £5,000 in 3 months (offer ends 6 October 2026; normally 30,000) is a limited-time offer; after 6 October the standard figure applies.

After the cut, the gap between the BA card and Capital on Tap Pro (10 points = 10 Avios on Pro) narrows to a quarter of an Avios per pound, and the BA card charges £250 against Pro’s £299 a year, with 2.99% on non-sterling spend against 0% non-sterling transaction fee. For a business that spends, say, £30,000 a year, the BA card earns about 7,500 more Avios than Pro; if £5,000 of that spend is non-sterling, Amex’s FX fee alone is roughly £150. The Avios guide has the full working and the question to put to your accountant about who owns the points.

Who should choose which

Plenty of businesses hold both: an Amex card for flights and hotels where the points are richest, and Capital on Tap for everything else, including everything abroad. If you go that way, put the day-to-day spend and the employee cards on the card that is accepted everywhere and charges nothing on FX, and treat the Amex as the specialist. My own reasons for sticking with one card are in the review, and the honest downside, the credit limit, is on its own page.