Earning Avios on business spend: cards, rates and the tax question

How UK businesses earn Avios

There are three realistic routes for a UK company. The first is a card that earns its own points and lets you convert them to Avios, which is how Capital on Tap works. The second is a card that earns Avios directly, which is the British Airways American Express Accelerating Business card. The third is a card that earns a transferable currency with British Airways as one of the transfer partners, which is Amex Membership Rewards on the Business Gold and Business Platinum cards.

Which route pays best depends on three things: the Avios per pound, the annual fee, and what you would otherwise have taken instead of Avios. On Capital on Tap the alternative is cash, which sets a hard floor that the Avios conversion has to beat. I have used the free Capital on Tap card for a few years, and I have taken rewards as cashback and points rather than Avios, so what follows on Avios values is research rather than my own redemptions.

Capital on Tap: 10 to 8 on the free card, 1:1 on Pro

Capital on Tap pays 1 point per £1 spent on the card, with each transaction rounded down to the nearest pound. Those points can be redeemed as balance credit, cash, gift cards, Avios, Virgin Points or Radisson Rewards. The FAQ gives the Avios conversion rates: “Free tier customers: 10 points convert to 8 Avios.” and “Pro customers: 10 points convert to 10 Avios.”.

So the free card earns 0.8 Avios per £1 and Pro earns 1 Avios per £1. Pro also earns the boosted rate on preloaded spend and on daily repayments through Smart Repay, which adds points before conversion. Whether the Pro fee is worth paying for the better conversion rate is the whole question on our Capital on Tap Pro break-even page, and the earning rules in full are on the Capital on Tap rewards page.

Two housekeeping rules affect Avios collectors more than cashback collectors, because they tend to save points up. Points expire if you go 24 months with no earning or redeeming, and points can be lost if you are more than 14 days late. A large unconverted balance is exposed to both.

BA Amex Accelerating Business

The British Airways Amex Accelerating Business is the only mainstream UK business card that earns Avios directly. Amex’s page states: 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 annual fee is £250, and the representative APR is stated as 104.9% APR representative (variable), including the fee. That APR figure is so high because the fee is included in the calculation; the purchase rate itself is lower, but it is still a card you should only hold if you clear it in full every month.

Eligibility is broader than Capital on Tap’s: Sole traders and small businesses with a UK business bank account; £20,000+ personal income. That makes it one of the few Avios options for sole traders, who we cover separately in sole trader business credit cards. The welcome offer at the time of writing is 40,000 Avios after £5,000 in 3 months (offer ends 6 October 2026; normally 30,000). Against that, the non-sterling fee is 2.99%, and Amex acceptance is narrower than Visa in the UK and abroad.

Amex Business Gold and Platinum via Membership Rewards

The American Express Business Gold and American Express Business Platinum earn Membership Rewards points rather than Avios: 1 Membership Rewards point per £1 (2 per £1 with Amex Travel) on Gold, and 1 point per £1 with the same Amex Travel bonus on Platinum. Amex’s pages say points can be transferred to frequent-traveller programmes and that transfer partners include British Airways, Marriott Bonvoy and Virgin Atlantic, with minimums, maximums and increments varying by partner. The pages I have checked do not state the points-to-Avios ratio, so I am not going to quote one here.

Both are charge cards, so the balance is due in full each month unless you opt into the Flexible Payment Option, and both are Ltd or LLP only. Gold costs £0 in year one, then £195; Platinum costs £650 and bundles travel credits and lounge access that only make sense for frequent travellers. The full comparison with Capital on Tap is in Capital on Tap vs Amex Business.

What an Avios is worth

British Airways does not publish a value. The UK frequent-flyer site Head for Points writes: “In our articles we use 1p as a ball-park figure, and it is the value I use myself, but the real world is more complicated.” That 1p is the figure used throughout this page. It is an average across very different redemptions: using Avios as part-payment on a cash fare or for short economy flights often yields less, and premium-cabin reward seats booked far ahead can yield more. The cash element charged alongside Avios on reward flights has also risen more than once recently, which pushes the effective value down for people who redeem in economy.

The practical consequence for a business is that Avios are only worth collecting if someone in the company will actually redeem them well. A director who flies long-haul in business class once a year can beat 1p. One who would spend them on a Friday flight to Edinburgh probably cannot, and should take cash.

Avios per £10,000 of spend, compared

The table assumes £10,000 of ordinary card spend, no welcome bonus, and values Avios at the Head for Points 1p ball-park. Fees are shown but not deducted, because the right way to spread a fee depends on your annual spend; the cashback and Avios calculator does that for the Capital on Tap options with your own figures.

The BA card also pays 10,000 bonus Avios for every £20,000 spent, up to three times a calendar year, which does not show in a £10,000 table but matters at higher spend. Capital on Tap Pro’s welcome bonus of 10,000 bonus points when you spend £5,000 in the first 3 months is a one-off and is excluded for the same reason.

Conversion mechanics on Capital on Tap

The Avios terms sit in Schedule B of Capital on Tap’s Rewards Terms. You must be a member of the British Airways Club to convert. The rate is displayed in your online portal, a minimum number of points may be required for a conversion, and once you confirm, “Avios will be credited to your BAEC account within 24 hours.” The conversion is one-way: the Rewards Terms say “Once you have redeemed your Points this cannot be reversed or transferred.” and the schedule adds that you cannot convert Avios back into points once the British Airways account has been credited.

Because points can be redeemed as soon as a transaction posts, and because the conversion is quick, there is no need to hold a large points balance waiting for a redemption. Convert when you know what you will use the Avios for, and keep the rest as points, which retain the cash option.

Who receives the Avios

Schedule B is explicit: “Where you are a partnership, limited company or limited liability partnership, only you (as the main account holder) can receive any Avios points converted from Points, and you consent to receive Avios points as such.” The Avios go into the main account holder’s personal British Airways Club account. They do not go to the company, and there is no mechanism for splitting them between directors or issuing them to the employee whose card earned them.

That has two consequences. Practically, the person named as the main account holder should be the person who will redeem. And it is the reason the tax question below exists at all: a benefit generated by company spending is arriving in an individual’s name.

The tax question

Paragraph 10 of Schedule B says: “We make no representations as to any income, use, excise or other tax liability of which you may incur as a result of participation in Rewards Membership or the BAEC. Such a tax liability may arise, for example, if you obtain Avios and or Points as a result of business expenditure. You should check with an accountant or tax adviser for further information.” Capital on Tap’s FAQ says the same about cash redemptions in general and that it cannot provide tax advice.

Neither can this site. The point to take to your accountant is simple to state: points earned on company expenditure are being converted into a personal benefit for a director. How that is treated depends on your circumstances, how the card is used and how your accountant records rewards, and it is not something to work out from a web page. Raise it before the first conversion rather than after.

When cashback beats Avios

On Capital on Tap the comparison is precise, because the same points can be taken as cash at 1 point = 1p (1,000 points = £10). On the free card, 10,000 points are worth £100 in cash or 8,000 Avios. For the Avios to be the better choice, you need to get more than 1.25p of value per Avios. At the Head for Points 1p ball-park, cash wins on the free card by a clear margin. On Pro the conversion is 1:1, so the break-even is 1p per Avios and it becomes a judgement about how well you redeem.

The rule of thumb that falls out of this: on the free card, take cash unless you have a specific premium-cabin redemption in mind and know its cash price. On Pro, convert if you regularly beat 1p; take cash if you do not. On the BA Amex the question does not arise, because Avios are all it pays, so the decision is whether £250 a year and Amex acceptance are worth the higher earn rate. A cashback card you clear every month, with 1% cashback and no fee, is the benchmark every Avios option has to beat, and the fee-free case for that is in Capital on Tap fees and APR and how to avoid business credit card interest.

Qatar Privilege Club also uses Avios

Avios is not only British Airways’ currency. Capital on Tap’s FAQ describes Avios as “the rewards currency used by both The British Airways Club and Qatar Airways Privilege Club”, and Avios can be moved between the two programmes. For a business whose travel is to the Gulf, Asia or Australia rather than across the Atlantic, Qatar redemptions can be the better use of the same Avios. The conversion from Capital on Tap points goes to a British Airways Club account under Schedule B; moving Avios onward to Privilege Club is done within the airline programmes, not through Capital on Tap.

If you are choosing between all of these and cashback for a company that spends across several categories, our roundup of the best UK business credit cards puts the Avios cards alongside the cashback ones.