BankStore’s Bank Index compared the fee lines of 17 banks and fintechs. On a free account, the price sits in card payments abroad, extra transfers, cash and the end of the introductory period.
For a company in its first year, an account that charges nothing each month looks like the obvious choice. Its real cost rarely sits in the monthly fee. It sits in what the company does with the account: paying a supplier abroad by card, sending more transfers than the plan includes, paying in cash, or keeping the account after an introductory year ends.
Those charges are the business bank account fees that founders tend to discover after opening an account rather than before. Every one of them is published and legal. They are also spread across tariff documents, help pages and pricing tables that few people read side by side.
BankStore, the company we founded, helps businesses choose and open bank accounts, and our team has set up close to ten thousand of them over some twenty years. Our public ranking, Bank Index, scores banks and fintechs against the needs of business clients and shows the reasoning and the source behind each rating. For this article we read the fee and card lines that Bank Index holds for 17 banks and payment firms across the UK, continental Europe, the United States, the Gulf and Southeast Asia.
One pattern ran through the whole set of providers. A zero monthly fee usually came with a price on activity, and the activity that cost the most differed from one provider to the next. The right account therefore depends less on the headline price than on how a particular company moves its money, from the currencies it pays in to the way its customers settle their bills.
Where do business bank account fees come from when the monthly fee is zero?
They come from four kinds of activity: card payments in another currency, transfers above a monthly allowance, cash, and the end of an introductory period. Each one is priced separately from the monthly fee.
Tide, a UK provider, shows the structure clearly. Its Free plan has no monthly charge and includes a handful of bank transfers. After that, according to its Bank Index card, “Each further transfer costs 20p, ATM withdrawals cost GBP 1,” with separate charges for same-day CHAPS payments and for deposits at the Post Office.
None of these charges looks large on its own. Over a year of normal trading, however, they can add up to more than a paid plan would have cost, and that comparison decides whether a free account is cheap for a given company.
Is there a business debit card with no foreign transaction fees?
There is, and the gap between providers is stark. Two of the largest UK banks charge a percentage on every card payment made outside sterling, and several newer providers charge nothing at all for the same transaction.
HSBC’s business debit card carries “a 2.75 percent non-sterling transaction fee and no annual charge,” according to its Bank Index card. Barclays charges an identical rate on its card.
Among the newer providers, Airwallex offers “0% foreign card transaction fees when spending from a held balance.” Starling, a UK bank that operates without branches, adds no fees of its own to card payments made abroad.
The difference matters most to companies that buy software, advertising or travel in dollars or euros. A business that spends the equivalent of 2,000 pounds a month on a card charged at 2.75% pays about 660 pounds a year for that line alone.
US companies meet the same question from the other side of the Atlantic. Mercury keeps domestic wires free but applies “a 3% conversion fee on every non-USD card transaction,” according to its card.
In Singapore, DBS waives the fee when its debit card is linked to the bank’s multi-currency account and charges it on a standard local account. For many companies, the choice of account inside a bank sets the price as much as the choice of bank.
What do business current account fees look like after the free period?
Several UK banks attract new businesses with a spell of free banking, and the price that follows is written into the same offer. Barclays gives smaller businesses a year without a monthly charge. Its Bank Index card puts the terms in one line: “No monthly fee for the first 12 months, then GBP 8.50 a month.”
NatWest goes further for start-ups and waives everyday charges for their first two years. Accounts opened since late April carry a condition that matters to cash-heavy businesses: “free banking stops if cash deposits pass 200,000 pounds in 12 months.”
Switching offers on personal accounts follow the same logic. When the Guardian reviewed them in September, it warned that “some of these deals come with quite a lot of strings attached.”
For a business, the practical consequence of an introductory offer is a date on the calendar. The free period ends on a known day, and the useful moment to compare alternatives is a month or two before that day, well before the first full invoice arrives.
Why does cash still cost a business money?
Cash costs money because fewer banks want to handle it at a counter. Britain has lost thousands of branches over the past decade, and the consumer group Which? counts 6,795 closures since January 2015, the Guardian reported in June.
The paper summed up the reasoning of the banks in a single sentence: “Banks justify the reduction of their networks on the grounds that customers are spurning traditional counter services in favour of banking online and via mobile phones.”
For a business that takes cash, the alternative to a branch is usually a Post Office counter, and that service carries its own price. HSBC charges a percentage of every deposit paid in at the Post Office, according to its card.
Starling prices the same service at “0.7% or GBP 3, whichever is higher.” For a shop, a cafe or a tradesperson paid in notes, this line can outweigh every other fee on the account.
At HSBC’s Post Office rate of 1.5%, a business that pays in 5,000 pounds a week would hand over about 3,900 pounds a year. That is more than a full year of monthly fees on any plan in this comparison.
Which transfers carry their own price?
In the UK and Europe, domestic payments are cheap or free at most providers in this comparison. In the United States, large banks charge for wires as a matter of course.
Chase charges a monthly fee on its main small-business account and lists wire charges separately. According to its card, “wires cost USD 15 incoming and USD 25 to 50 outgoing.”
In the UK, the same-day CHAPS payment is the exception that tends to catch companies paying a large invoice or completing a property purchase. Starling charges nothing for ordinary Faster Payments and a flat fee for CHAPS, according to its card.
Fintechs that sell monthly plans price transfers through allowances. Revolut’s business plans include more free local and international transfers at each price step, so a company that knows its monthly volume can see which tier pays for itself.
Wise prices most of its transfers as a share of the amount sent. Its card lists “No monthly fee, a one-time GBP 50 setup fee, free domestic receipt, transfers from 0.24%.” For a company sending large sums abroad, volume rather than the number of payments is the figure to watch.
Which fee line matters most for which kind of business?
The answer depends on how the business earns and spends, and four common profiles show how much it varies. Each profile points to a different line on the tariff.
Online businesses and software companies pay much of their cost by card in foreign currencies, so the foreign transaction fee usually decides their bill. A card at 2.75% and a card with no fee can produce very different annual costs on identical spending.
Shops, restaurants, market traders and building firms handle cash, and for them the deposit charge, the cost of using the Post Office and any cap on free cash banking matter more than the monthly fee. NatWest’s new cash limit falls on this group.
Importers and exporters move larger sums across borders. For them the transfer price, the exchange-rate margin and the fee for receiving money from abroad carry the most weight, and all three deserve a line-by-line reading before an account is opened with any bank. Small differences compound on large sums.
Start-ups in their first year are often on introductory terms, and the date those terms end is the figure to note. A planned switch is calmer than a rushed one.
How does a business bank account fees comparison work in practice?
A useful business bank account fees comparison starts with the company’s own figures rather than the bank’s headline. Three are enough: how many transfers it sends in a month, how much it spends by card in other currencies, and how much cash it pays in.
Each provider’s fee lines can then be priced in minutes. Bank Index was built for that step. Its home page states that “every score shows its reason and source,” and on hand-checked profiles the source link opens the bank’s own price page.
Consider a studio in London that designs websites, spends 1,500 pounds a month on US software and sends ten local transfers. On Tide’s Free plan, the card fee alone would cost the studio about 41 pounds a month. Tide’s paid Smart plan costs a little over 12 pounds a month and removes the foreign-exchange fee, so in this case the free plan is the more expensive of the two.
The studio is an illustration, but the rates come from Tide’s Bank Index card. The same arithmetic works for any provider on the index, whether the company is a two-person agency paying for software or a trading firm settling invoices in three currencies every week.
Where does BankStore come in?
BankStore sits between businesses and the banks that serve them. Bank Index shows the price of each account in public, and BankStore then helps a company match with the providers that fit its business and guides it through the application. That second step matters because a fee table cannot tell a company whether a bank will accept it.
The least visible price sits in cross-border payments. BankStore’s cross-border payments page warns that “Zero-fee” transfers “bury 2–3% in the rate,” a cost that is not shown as a separate line on the invoice.
The same page makes a point that applies to every account discussed here: relying on a single provider is a risk as well as a cost. In the page’s own words, “One freeze stops the company.”
What can a fee line not show?
A published fee line shows the public price and nothing more. Large customers often negotiate their own terms, and banks can waive charges for clients they want to keep, but neither appears on a public tariff. A public comparison cannot show them.
The exchange rate is a second gap in what any comparison can capture. Many providers publish a card fee but not the margin they add to the market rate before that fee applies. Wise, Airwallex and Revolut describe their exchange-rate terms on their pricing pages, and most banks in this comparison leave the margin unstated.
Published prices also change during the year, and Bank Index dates each fact for that reason. A line checked in September 2026 may not hold by the time an account is opened, so the bank’s own page remains the final word on the day of application. Service quality is a further gap, since a tariff says nothing about how quickly a bank responds when a payment is held for checks.
Nothing here is financial advice for a particular company. An accountant or a banking specialist who knows how the business trades can price these lines more precisely than a general comparison.
Where are business bank account fees heading?
In our view, the free account will not disappear. What is changing is where the price sits: in plan tiers, card foreign-exchange fees and transfer allowances rather than in a single monthly charge. Tide sells plans up to GBP 69.99 a month and Qonto up to EUR 199, according to their cards.
That model is fair to customers as long as the tiers can be compared. Bank Index places the fee line, the card line, the source and the date of each fact in the same position on all 214 hand-checked bank profiles, so two providers can be read against each other in minutes.
One figure would make every comparison simpler, and it is missing everywhere. What does a typical small business pay its bank in a year, with every charge included? Nobody among these 17 providers publishes it.
