Business current account

With a business current account you can enjoy a range of benefits, including:

• The support of a locally based business manager
• 24-hour online banking
• The ability to make and receive payments by cash, cheque and electronically
• Night safes at some branches
• Instant access to your business funds
• An overdraft facility
• Personalised cheque and deposit books and easy-to-read statements

If you're a brand new business, you can enjoy up to 18 months' free banking when you open a current account.

Free banking means no account charges for payments into and out of and running your account (provided your account is run in credit and you do not pay out more than £1 million during a 12 month period). Free banking and opening an account is subject to status. Applies to new businesses that started trading within the past 12 months.

We take the pain out of opening a new business account. We'll take care of most of the paperwork and we'll help you transfer your existing banking if you're thinking about switching.

There are two tariffs:

Standard menu tariff

Ideal if you pay in money on a regular basis. You pay only for the services you use, plus a basic monthly account maintenance charge.

Auto free tariff

This could be ideal value if your business makes a lot of automated payments. There's no charge for making standing orders, Direct Debits and regular automated credits, and no limit to the number of free transactions you can make.

Charges are applied monthly, calculated on the services you've used. You'll receive around 14 days' notice of amounts to be charged, along with details of our calculations.

If you have to pay account charges in any of the charging periods shown below (left hand column), we will take them from your account on the dates in the right hand column.

Charges for other services are available on request.

Customer's returned items Unpaid item fee

An unpaid item fee of £35 (subject to a maximum of £140 per day) will be payable if:

• you informally request an overdraft by issuing instructions for a withdrawal or other payment; and
• the payment cannot be met from the funds in your account or any unused arranged overdraft; and
• we decide in our discretion not to make the payment. The fees are charged on the day we decide not to make the payment.

Paid referral fee

A paid referral fee of £30 will be payable if:

• you informally request an overdraft by issuing instructions for a withdrawal or other payment; and
• the payment cannot be met from the funds in your account or any unused arranged overdraft; and
• we decide in our discretion to make the payment so that an unarranged overdraft is created or increased. We only charge one paid referral fee per day, even if more than one item is paid from your account on that day. The total fee for a calendar month, capped at £180 per month, will be debited to your account on the sixth business day of the month after the month in which the transactions took place. The paid referral fee is payable in addition to interest.