Capital on Tap vs Barclaycard Business: Select Cashback and Premium Plus compared

At a glance

Barclaycard sells two business credit cards. Select Cashback is the free one: £0 annual fee, 1% cashback, uncapped, but only in months when you spend more than £2,000, 2.99% on non-sterling spend, 25.5% APR representative (variable). Premium Plus costs £150 per account, pays 0.5% cashback, capped at £400 a year; travel insurance when the trip is paid on the card, and drops the non-sterling fee to 0.99%; its representative APR is 54.3% APR representative (variable), including the fee. Both are issued by Barclays Bank PLC and both accept sole traders.

Capital on Tap’s free card has £0 annual fee, earns 1 point per £1 with no monthly threshold, charges 0% non-sterling transaction fee, and gives you unlimited free employee cards with per-card limits. It is not available to sole traders. It advertises rates as low as 13.86% APR (variable) and does not publish a representative APR. I have used it for a few years in a small agency, on the free tier; I have not held either Barclaycard card, so the Barclaycard side of this page is research from Barclaycard’s own pages, checked on 15 September 2026.

• Sole trader: Barclaycard Select Cashback, because Capital on Tap will not take you.
• Ltd or LLP with steady spend over £2,000 a month, all in sterling: either card earns you the same 1%; Capital on Tap adds free employee cards and accounting sync, Barclaycard adds a published APR and a bank behind it.
• Ltd or LLP with any non-sterling spend, or months under the threshold: Capital on Tap.
• Frequent traveller who wants travel insurance bundled in: Barclaycard Premium Plus, if the insurance is worth £150 per account to you.

Side by side

Barclaycard figures are from the Select Cashback and Premium Plus product pages and the Premium Plus summary box; Capital on Tap figures are from its card page, FAQ and credit agreement. “Not stated” means the page does not say.

Cashback and the £2,000 monthly threshold

On paper the two free cards pay the same 1%. In practice they do not, because Barclaycard’s page is precise: 1% cashback, uncapped, but only in months when you spend more than £2,000. Spend £1,950 in a statement month and you earn nothing on it. Spend £2,050 and you earn 1% on all of it. For a business whose monthly card spend hovers around that line, the effective rate over a year can be well under 1%, and it is impossible to predict without knowing which months will be quiet.

Capital on Tap has no threshold. It pays 1 point per £1, and 1 point = 1p (1,000 points = £10). The only haircut is that each transaction is each transaction rounded down to the nearest pound, so a £24.99 purchase earns 24 points. There are no points on cash withdrawals or fees. Redemption is as cash (£10 minimum for cash to a bank account, paid within two business days), balance credit, gift cards, Avios, Virgin Points or Radisson Rewards. Points points expire after 24 months with no earning or redeeming, and points can be lost if you are more than 14 days late. The rewards page covers every clause.

Barclaycard Premium Plus is a different proposition: 0.5% cashback, capped at £400 a year; travel insurance when the trip is paid on the card. Half a percent with a £400 cap means the cashback stops growing at £80,000 of annual spend, and the card is really selling the insurance and the 0.99% FX rate, not the rewards. The cashback calculator shows what your own spend earns on Capital on Tap’s free card and on Pro.

Non-sterling fees: 0% vs 2.99% vs 0.99%

Capital on Tap charges 0% non-sterling transaction fee, and £0 ATM fee at home or abroad, although interest on cash withdrawals from the day you take them. Barclaycard Select Cashback charges 2.99% on non-sterling transactions and 3% (min £3), plus 2.99% if non-sterling on cash. Barclaycard Premium Plus charges 0.99% on non-sterling transactions and 3% (min £3), plus 0.99% if non-sterling on cash.

If a fifth of your card spend is in dollars or euros, which is common for anyone paying for US software, cloud hosting or advertising, the Select Cashback’s 2.99% cancels out a large part of its 1% cashback on its own. On £1,000 a month of non-sterling spend, that fee is about £30 a month, £360 a year. Premium Plus’s 0.99% is far less painful, roughly £10 a month on the same spend, but you have paid £150 per account for the privilege and the cashback halved. The FX fee calculator takes your own numbers.

Annual fees and other charges

Capital on Tap: £0 annual fee; £0 charge for missing the minimum payment; no over-limit fee (the card is declined instead); employee cards unlimited free employee cards. The minimum payment is the greater of 10% of the balance or £100. The paid tier, Pro, is £299 a year and is a travel-perks upgrade rather than a different card; the Pro page does the break-even maths. Every line of the credit agreement’s fee table is reproduced on the fees page.

Barclaycard Select Cashback: £0 annual fee, and the page says no fees for the card or account. Barclaycard Premium Plus: £150 per account, per the summary box, which is charged whether or not you earn the cashback back. Premium Plus includes travel insurance when the trip is paid on the card, which is the main reason to pay the fee.

Representative APR: Barclaycard publishes one, Capital on Tap does not

This is the clearest structural difference between the two issuers. Barclaycard’s product pages state a representative APR in the standard format: Select Cashback is 25.5% APR representative (variable), and Premium Plus is 54.3% APR representative (variable), including the fee. The Premium Plus figure is high because the annual fee is included in the calculation on an assumed limit; the underlying purchase rate is lower.

Capital on Tap 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 built from your fixed business rate plus the Bank of England Bank Rate, so it moves when the Bank of England moves, but rate only changes at the start of a billing period. We do not repeat third-party figures for Capital on Tap’s representative APR because the ones in circulation contradict each other. What that means for you: if you intend to pay in full every month, the difference is academic, since both issuers charge no interest on purchases repaid by the due date (no interest on purchases if you pay the statement balance in full by the due date on Capital on Tap). If you intend to borrow, Barclaycard gives you a number to compare before you apply and Capital on Tap gives you one after a soft search. Our guide to avoiding interest is the practical answer either way.

Eligibility and sole traders

Barclaycard Select Cashback: Business owner or director, UK-based, turnover £10,000 to £6.5 million; sole traders accepted. Premium Plus: Turnover £10,000 to £6.5 million. A turnover floor of £10,000 a year is low, and the acceptance of sole traders makes Barclaycard the most accessible of the cards we compare. Barclaycard does not state on either product page whether a personal guarantee is required, so ask before you sign; the personal guarantee guide explains what to look for.

Capital on Tap: a Ltd, LLP or PLC, active on Companies House, with £24,000 minimum annual turnover, no unsatisfied CCJs in the last 12 months, not in a high-risk industry, applied for by an active UK director or a shareholder with 25% or more who gives a personal guarantee. There is no minimum trading history. It is not available to sole traders. Applying involves a soft search on your personal credit file when you apply, with a decision in around 2 minutes. The eligibility checker asks five questions and routes sole traders to cards that do accept them, Barclaycard Select Cashback among them.

Employee cards and integrations

Capital on Tap gives you unlimited free employee cards with per-card limits, with limits per billing period or per transaction, and instant virtual cards for subscriptions and one-off online purchases. It syncs to Sage, Xero, QuickBooks, FreeAgent and more, syncs every 12 hours, and there is 6 months of Xero free for first-time subscribers. Barclaycard Premium Plus says employee cards are free; the Select Cashback page does not state an employee card fee, and neither page names an accounting integration.

This is the part of the comparison where first-hand experience is most useful. In my agency, staff have their own cards with limits set from the portal, software subscriptions sit on virtual cards so each one can be cut off on its own, and the accounting feed does the reconciliation legwork. None of that costs anything. Whether Barclaycard offers equivalent tooling I cannot say from its product pages. Our guides on employee cards and spend controls and virtual cards for subscriptions describe how we run it.

Credit limits

Neither Barclaycard page states a credit-limit range, so we cannot compare figures. Capital on Tap advertises limits up to £250,000, with automatic account reviews for higher limits. My own limit came in lower than I expected and increases have been hard to get; Capital on Tap’s own advice is 3 to 6 months of on-time history between requests and to focus on regular use, on-time repayments, an active Direct Debit, current Companies House filings, an Open Banking connection and a clean record elsewhere. It also warns that a manual review can lower your limit as well as raise it. The workaround is Preloading lets you spend beyond your limit with your own money. All of it, including what did and did not move the needle for me, is on the credit limit page. If a large limit from day one is essential, a bank that already knows your business may be more generous, and you should ask Barclaycard directly.

Who should choose which

If you are a limited company or LLP that pays in full each month, spends at least some money abroad and has more than one person spending, Capital on Tap is the stronger card and it is the one I use. If you are a sole trader, Barclaycard Select Cashback is a perfectly good free card and the honest recommendation, with the threshold and the FX fee as the two things to watch. The wider field, including Amex and the other banks, is on the best business credit cards UK page.