Business credit cards for limited companies: what to know before applying

Who can apply: eligibility patterns across issuers

If you run a UK limited company or LLP, you are the customer every business card issuer is designed around. The patterns are consistent enough that you can predict most outcomes before you fill in a form.

The applicant must be a director or significant shareholder. Capital on Tap wants an active UK director or a shareholder with 25% or more; Amex wants a director or member; the banks say “director” or “person with authority to borrow”. An office manager cannot apply on the company’s behalf, though they can be given a card once the account exists.

Legal form matters more than size. Capital on Tap accepts businesses registered as Ltd, LLP or PLC. American Express Business Gold and Platinum are limited to Ltd and LLP, and have been since January 2026. Funding Circle’s card is limited companies only. Every one of these excludes sole traders, which is why we wrote a separate guide for sole traders.

Banks want the current account first. NatWest, Lloyds, HSBC, Santander and Metro all list an existing business current account with them as a condition. That is not a small hurdle for a new company: opening the account can take weeks, and the card application comes after. The non-bank issuers (Capital on Tap, Amex, Funding Circle, Barclaycard) do not care where you bank, though they will ask for the account details you will repay from.

Turnover and history thresholds vary widely. Capital on Tap’s referral terms cite a £24,000 minimum annual turnover, and its FAQ says there is no minimum trading history. Barclaycard Select Cashback quotes business owner or director, uk-based, turnover £10,000 to £6.5 million; sole traders accepted. Funding Circle wants at least a year of trading and £30,000 of turnover. Amex looks at the director’s personal income, £20,000 for Gold and £35,000 for Platinum, rather than the company’s figures.

Clean records on both files. Capital on Tap requires no unsatisfied CCJs in the last 12 months for you and the business, the company to be active on Companies House, and the business to be not in a high-risk industry. It runs a soft search on your personal credit file when you apply; in its own words, “Yes, we run a soft search on your personal credit file when you apply, so applying won't affect your credit score. We only run a hard search on your business's credit file once you sign your credit agreement”. The full list, with the high-risk categories, is on our eligibility page, and the eligibility checker turns it into five questions.

Personal guarantees and director liability

The point of a limited company is that its debts are the company’s, not yours. A business credit card is the most common place that principle gets quietly set aside. Capital on Tap states plainly: “Yes, we require a personal guarantee from a director or major shareholder of the company when you apply for a business credit card.” Santander says a guarantee is “Required from all directors or members of a Ltd or LLP”. Tide’s brokered card (which is Capital on Tap’s product) and Funding Circle both say yes. NatWest, Lloyds, HSBC, Metro and Barclaycard do not state the position on their product pages, which is not the same as not requiring one; ask before you sign.

What the guarantee means in practice: if the company does not pay, the lender can pursue the guarantor personally for the balance, plus reasonable enforcement, legal and tracing costs. It survives your resignation as a director unless you get it released. It is not reduced by another director also signing. And it is personal, so a default can end up on your own credit file even though the card was the company’s.

None of that is a reason to avoid a business card. It is a reason to treat the limit as money you could personally owe, to pay in full every month, and to read the personal guarantee guide before you sign rather than after. If you have co-directors, agree in writing who is guaranteeing what.

How limits are set

Every issuer advertises a ceiling. Capital on Tap says up to £250,000; Lloyds and Santander say up to £25,000. The ceiling tells you nothing about your starting limit. Issuers set that from the company’s turnover and filings, its credit file, and the guarantor’s personal file, and new companies with thin files start low.

On Capital on Tap, limits move in two ways. There are automatic account reviews for higher limits, which consider “timely repayments and affordability”. And you can ask for a manual review in the portal under Your account, then Credit limits and rates, or by phone, with the warning that a manual review can lower your limit as well as raise it. The company’s own blog suggests 3 to 6 months of on-time history between requests, and lists the things that help: regular use, on-time repayments, an active Direct Debit, current Companies House filings, an Open Banking connection and a clean record elsewhere. Open Banking data is used to assess limit increases, so linking the business bank account is not optional if you want the limit to move.

If you need to spend beyond the limit, Capital on Tap’s answer is Preloading: Preloading lets you spend beyond your limit with your own money. That is a debit-card arrangement using e-money rather than credit, useful for a one-off large purchase but not a substitute for a working limit.

Bookkeeping: company card, company expense

This is where a company card earns its keep, and it has nothing to do with rewards. When a purchase is made on a card in the company’s name, it is a company expense from the moment it happens. The transaction feeds into your accounting software, gets matched to a receipt or a bill, and the statement is settled from the business account. There is no reimbursement claim, no personal money mixed in, and no question about whose expense it was.

Compare that with a director paying on a personal card. Each purchase needs an expense claim. If the claim is not made, or the company repays the director informally, or the director takes money out to cover a personal card bill, the amounts flow through the director’s loan account. If that account is overdrawn at the year end and not repaid within nine months and one day, the company pays a section 455 charge of 33.75% of the outstanding amount; a loan over £10,000 at any point in the year is also a benefit in kind. The business vs personal card guide works through this properly. The short version: a company card removes a whole category of year-end problems.

Two habits make the bookkeeping close to automatic. Connect the card to your accounting package (Capital on Tap syncs to Sage, Xero, QuickBooks, FreeAgent and more, covered in the accounting sync guide), and photograph receipts at the point of purchase rather than at month end.

Building the company’s credit file

A limited company has its own credit file, separate from yours, held by agencies such as Experian (whose Commercial Delphi score weighs filing history, payment behaviour, CCJs and the directors’ own records), Creditsafe and Dun & Bradstreet. A new company has almost nothing on it. A credit facility that is used and repaid on time, month after month, is one of the few positive data points a young company can generate.

Two caveats. First, issuers do not all report to all agencies, and Capital on Tap does not publicly state which agencies it reports to; it does say it runs a soft personal search at application and a hard search on the business file when you sign. Second, the file responds to everything, not just the card: late Companies House filings, a CCJ, or a director with personal defaults will pull the score down faster than a card can lift it. The business credit score guide covers what the agencies actually look at.

Employee cards

Once the company has a card, additional cards for staff are usually cheap or free, and they change how a small team works: nobody spends personal money and waits for a reimbursement, and every purchase is already in the accounts. Capital on Tap offers unlimited free employee cards, with limits per billing period or per transaction. Amex Business Gold offers up to 20 complimentary. HSBC charges £32 per card after year one; NatWest’s and Lloyds’s annual fees are per card. Santander’s and Barclaycard Premium Plus’s are free.

The limit is shared. Employee cards draw on the company’s single credit limit, so the point above about starting limits applies with more force: five staff cards on a modest limit means somebody gets declined. The employee cards guide covers limits, roles, leavers and the terms that make the company liable for whatever a cardholder does.

Choosing a card: cashback, points or a plain bank card

For a limited company the choice is really between three shapes of product.

Flat cashback, no fee. The card earns a fixed percentage on everything and costs nothing to hold. Capital on Tap (1% cashback, £0 annual fee, 0% non-sterling transaction fee) and Barclaycard Select Cashback (1% cashback, uncapped, but only in months when you spend more than £2,000) are the main examples; Funding Circle’s card is 2% cashback for 6 months (capped at £2,000), then 1% uncapped. These suit companies whose spend is broad and whose priority is simplicity.

Points with an annual fee. Amex Business Gold (£0 in year one, then £195) and Platinum (£650) earn Membership Rewards points with sizeable welcome bonuses, plus travel perks on Platinum. They are charge cards: the balance is due in full each month. Amex acceptance is narrower than Visa, and the 2.99% FX fee matters if you buy software in dollars. The fee only pays back if you spend enough and value the points; our Amex comparison does the sums.

The bank’s own card. NatWest, Lloyds and HSBC cards have small annual fees (often waived in year one or with a spend threshold), modest or no rewards, and FX fees near 3%. Their advantage is integration with the account you already have and a familiar relationship manager. The high-street comparison covers them.

Whichever shape you choose, interest should be irrelevant, because you should not be paying any. 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. If you expect to carry a balance, a card is the wrong tool and the card vs loan vs overdraft guide is the one to read.

Short comparison

Figures from each issuer’s own page on the date at the foot of this page. Eligibility is summarised; the full wording is on the issuer’s site.

Interest rates are deliberately left out of the table. The banks publish representative APRs (Lloyds 15.95% APR representative (variable), NatWest 24.3% APR representative (variable), for example), Amex Gold and Platinum are charge cards, and Capital on Tap publishes a floor rate rather than a representative one. Comparing those directly would mislead. Full fee tables are on the best business credit cards roundup.

Our pick, with the limit caveat

For a typical UK limited company that pays in full, buys some software or services in foreign currency, and wants staff cards without a per-card fee, the free Capital on Tap card is the one I would choose again, and the one I use. £0 annual fee, 0% non-sterling transaction fee, unlimited free employee cards, a sync to the main accounting packages and 1% cashback on everything is a hard combination to beat on a card with no fee.

The caveat is the one already made: do not plan around the advertised ceiling. If your company needs a large limit from day one, or you expect to borrow rather than pay in full, look at the bank cards where the limit can be discussed with a relationship manager, or at a loan or overdraft instead. If you do apply, the application walkthrough covers what to have ready, and the review is the long version of everything on this page.