Best UK bank referral bonuses in 2026: every scheme we've tested

Affiliate disclosure: the guides linked below contain referral links. That's the nature of refer-a-friend: if you use one, the new customer gets the bonus described and we get the referrer's side of the same published reward. Nobody pays us to rank higher, and the order below is by what a new customer actually receives.

If you're looking for banks with a referral bonus in the UK, the real list is shorter than most roundups suggest. As of September 2026, five banking brands we cover run a refer-a-friend scheme that actually pays new customers: Tide (£100 in credit for business accounts), American Express (15,000 Avios on the BA Classic card), Yonder (£10 off, two months free and up to 20,000 points), Monzo (a randomised £10, £20 or £50) and Zilch (£5 off your first purchase). Monzo is the change since we last updated this page: the mystery reward it pays dropped a tier at every step on 13 August 2026, from £20/£50/£100 to £10/£20/£50, on unchanged odds of 94/5/1. That takes its average from £22.30 to £10.90 and drops it from the top of this list to fourth. Four more exist, but none is something you can act on today. Starling began trialling a refer-a-friend scheme in June 2026 that pays both sides £25, but issues codes only to customers it invites, and Chase pays £50 a side on an invitation-only offer with single-use codes, so there's no code any website can give you. The high street is no longer empty either: Barclays pays £50 a side and Lloyds £30, both live as we write this, and neither claimable from a website for reasons covered further down. All four sit outside the ranked list. HSBC, NatWest and Santander still run nothing and compete on switching bonuses instead.

Every offer on this page was re-tested at the start of August 2026, and Monzo again on 4 September 2026 after it changed its terms. Each linked guide shows the exact date that specific scheme last passed our checks.

The five bank referral bonuses compared

Which UK banks have referral bonuses in 2026?

Refer-a-friend is now almost entirely a digital-first thing. Across UK banking, the schemes that exist today split by account type:

• Personal current account: Monzo runs the only established referral bonus among major UK current accounts that's open to everyone, though its mystery reward dropped a tier in August 2026 and now averages £10.90. Chase pays £50 a side but only invites selected customers, with single-use codes you can't get from a website (covered below). Starling only began trialling a £25 scheme in June 2026, and it too invites the customers who get a code (also below, untested). Monzo itself doesn't pay a switching bonus, so the referral is the only sign-up reward it offers.
• Business banking: Tide pays £100, the largest flat referral amount of any scheme here. Monzo runs a second scheme for business accounts, separate from its personal one, paying £50 to each side when the referred business opens a Monzo Business account. It is not in the table above because the £50 needs a link from an existing Monzo Business customer, and we don't publish one.
• Credit cards: American Express runs the most established referral programme in UK cards, and Yonder (a points-based challenger card) runs the most generous one by total value.
• Pay later: Zilch pays a small £5 reward on sign-up.
• High-street banks: Barclays (£50 a side) and Lloyds (£30 a side) both run one as of August 2026, though neither can be claimed through a website. HSBC, NatWest and Santander advertise nothing. First Direct paused its recommend-a-friend scheme some years ago and now competes with a switching bonus, and Nationwide's old £100 referral programme is also long gone.

We cover referral schemes beyond banking too (energy, mobile, investing), but this page sticks to bank accounts, cards and money apps. For the full cross-category list, see every UK referral code we track.

Tide: £100 of account credit for your business

The largest guaranteed referral amount on this list, but it's for business banking: Tide is a business current account for sole traders and limited companies. Sign up with a referral code, spend £500 on the Tide card within 90 days, and £100 in account credit lands for both you and the referrer.

Tide is also the only scheme here that still uses an actual typed code rather than a tracking link, so you enter it during sign-up. The £500-in-90-days spend requirement is the real qualifier: fine if the card becomes your day-to-day business spending card, pointless if the account would sit empty.

The code and the step-by-step are on our Tide referral code page, which pays £100 in business account credit, and our Tide review covers whether the account itself fits your business before the bonus enters the picture. Tide is not the only business account paying a sign-up reward: business bank account referral bonuses compared sets it against Monzo Business, Starling and Incard.

American Express: 15,000 Avios on the BA Classic

Applying for the British Airways American Express Classic through a referral link pays a 15,000-Avios welcome bonus. Amex calls that limited-time and states no end date for it. It does not publish the direct-application figure anywhere we can read, so for that we follow Head for Points (opens in new tab), which reports the standard 5,000 doubled to 10,000 for direct applicants until 6 October 2026. You need to spend £2,000 on the card in the first three months to trigger it, and the card has no annual fee. Existing cardholders can refer up to 15 people a year, with the referrer's reward varying by which Amex they hold.

This is a credit card, so an application means a credit check, and the £2,000 spend target only makes sense if you'd route that spending through the card anyway. If you're weighing Amex against a challenger points card, we've compared them directly in Yonder vs Amex Gold.

Full terms on our BA Amex referral code page.

Yonder: £10 off, two months free and up to 20,000 points

The most generous referral package by total value, spread across three parts. Joining Yonder's Full plan (£15/month) through a referral link gets you £10 off your first purchase, two months of the membership fee free instead of the standard one, and up to 20,000 bonus points that unlock in tiers as you spend in the first 30 days: 4,000 points at £200, another 6,000 at £500, and the final 10,000 at £1,000. On the free plan, the referral pays £10 off plus up to 2,000 tiered points. Referrers earn 10,000 points on a Full sign-up or 1,000 on a Free one.

Like Amex, it's a credit card with a credit check, and the full 20,000 points require £1,000 of spending in the first month. Our Yonder referral code page has the link, and is Yonder worth it covers the membership maths.

Monzo: a random £10, £20 or £50 each side

The easiest reward here to qualify for, and the only one you can't read in advance. Join through a referral link (there's no code to type), make any card payment within 30 days, and the cash lands in your account a few days later. The referrer gets the same draw. Monzo publishes the odds in its scheme terms: £10 to 94% of people, £20 to 5%, £50 to 1%, an average of £10.90. Every tier dropped one step when Monzo rewrote its referral terms on 13 August 2026, from £20/£50/£100, which is the single biggest change to a UK bank referral this year.

Eligibility is strict in one specific way: you must never have held a Monzo account before, even a closed one. You'll also need to be a UK resident aged 16 or over, and joint accounts don't qualify.

Monzo publishes a second set of referral terms for business accounts, and the numbers are bigger: £50 to each side when the referred business opens a Monzo Business account, £10 when they open a personal current account instead, a maximum of three rewards a calendar month, and a referrer whose Monzo Business account has been open at least 7 days. Which link you use decides which set of terms applies. Business bank account referral bonuses compared sets the £50 against Tide, Starling and Incard.

Get the link and the full terms on our Monzo referral code page. The Monzo mystery reward covers the odds, what they average to, and the two clauses that pay a flat £5 instead.

Zilch: £5 off your first purchase

The smallest reward here, but also the lowest effort: sign up through a referral link, get approved for the card, and £5 in Zilch rewards is credited to spend on your first purchase. The referrer gets £5 too.

One caveat worth flagging: Zilch is buy-now-pay-later credit. A £5 bonus is not a reason to start using BNPL, so this one only makes sense if you were going to use Zilch anyway. Our Zilch review covers how the product works; the link is on our Zilch referral code page.

One to watch: Starling's new £25 trial

After years without any public refer-a-friend scheme, Starling began trialling one in June 2026: both the new customer and the referrer receive a guaranteed £25, added to a Space within 30 days of the new customer meeting the reward conditions. Those conditions are the part no website can tell you, because Starling sets them per promotion and shows them in the referral message or on the Refer a Friend screen in the app; its published terms only give setting up Direct Debits or making payments from the account as examples. The code is typed into the app during sign-up, and the terms set no cap on how many people one customer can refer. Starling's terms count "a Starling personal, business or sole trader current account" as eligible, so business accounts are in; joint, teen, Under 16s, savings and currency accounts are not.

It isn't in the ranked list above because it fails the test this page is named after: we haven't been able to test it. Starling issues codes only to customers it invites into the promotion, and it hasn't invited us, so there is no code we can publish. Our Starling referral page explains the scheme in full and names the banking referrals paying today; until the trial settles, treat the terms as subject to change. The referral was never the reason to open one anyway: Starling charges nothing to spend or withdraw cash abroad, which is why the best bank for travel abroad pairs it with Monzo and sets both against Chase, Revolut and Wise.

Barclays and Lloyds: real schemes, no code we can give you

For years the answer here was simple: the big banks paid switching bonuses, not referrals. That stopped being true in 2026. Two of the big four now run genuine refer-a-friend schemes that pay the new customer as much as the referrer, and neither one helps you if you arrived from a website.

Barclays pays £50 to each side, on an offer running from 16 June to 31 October 2026. The new customer opens a Barclays Bank Account or Premier Current Account in the app, in their sole name (joint and Basic accounts don't qualify), pays in £1,500 and makes three debit card payments within 30 days, then keeps the account open for more than 58 days. It stacks with the switch bonus, currently £200 and running to 27 August 2026: Barclays assesses the two independently.

The catch is who is allowed to refer you. Barclays sends the referral code only to customers it emails, and its terms define the person being referred as someone the referrer "knows personally and trusts, with whom they have a direct, genuine relationship, and who is not a stranger or member of the general public". Publishing a Barclays code to strangers is precisely what that clause forbids, which is why there is no Barclays code on this site. Treat any site that offers you one as ignoring the terms it is quoting.

Lloyds pays £30 to each side, with no closing date announced. You need to be brand new to Lloyds, meaning no current account, savings account, credit card, loan or mortgage, and not even an additional cardholder on someone else's card. The account must be in your sole name, and the referrer needs a Lloyds or Halifax current account. This one stacks with switch offers too, and Lloyds says so outright: "If you qualify for both, you can be paid twice."

Lloyds sets no rule about who you share with. The problem is mechanical: the referral link is generated inside the Lloyds app and expires after 14 days. Any link published on this page would be dead within a fortnight, and an expired link still opens the account while paying neither side, which is worse than no link at all.

One number to watch. Lloyds Banking Group's launch announcement in November 2025 said £50 each side, and the live Lloyds page now says £30. The scheme was cut and the announcement was never updated, so most roundups still quote the higher figure. It is £30.

Referral bonus or switching bonus: which pays more?

These get lumped together, but they're different mechanisms and they don't compete for the same decision:

• A referral bonus comes from an existing customer's link or code. You open a new account alongside whatever you already have. Nothing closes, no direct debits move, and the amounts are smaller: £5 to £100 across the five schemes above.
• A switching bonus comes from the bank itself, requires a full switch through the Current Account Switch Service (CASS), and usually closes your old account as part of the process. When the big banks run them, they're typically £100 to £200, but they appear and vanish with marketing cycles rather than running permanently.

You rarely have to choose. None of the five referral schemes on this page requires a switch, so the usual play is to keep your old account, collect a referral bonus on a new digital account, and save the CASS switch (and your old account's closure) for whenever a high-street switching offer is live and worth it.

At Barclays and Lloyds the two now come from the same bank and stack, which both say in their own terms. Barclays pays the most: £50 referral plus its switch bonus, which is £200 until 27 August 2026. The referral half runs to 31 October, and either way you need a referral from someone you actually know.

How we test these offers

Every referral scheme listed on this site is re-checked weekly: we open the live landing page, confirm the advertised reward still matches what each guide says, and re-read the qualifying terms. The date on each brand guide is the date that specific offer last passed, not a calendar stamp. When a scheme breaks or gets paused (it happens; brands pull referral programmes with no notice), the guide says so prominently rather than quietly carrying on. The full process is on our methodology page.

All five ranked offers above were last tested in early August 2026, and Monzo again on 4 September 2026 after it rewrote its terms. Starling's new trial is the flagged exception: listed for completeness, but with no code we can publish, because Starling issues them only to customers it invites.

Bank referral bonus FAQs

Which UK bank has the biggest referral bonus?

Tide, at £100 of account credit, though it is for business accounts and requires £500 of card spending within 90 days. Among personal accounts anyone can open it is Monzo, though for less than it used to be: its mystery reward dropped from £20/£50/£100 to £10/£20/£50 on 13 August 2026, an average of £10.90.

Do Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds or NatWest pay refer-a-friend bonuses?

Barclays and Lloyds do. Barclays pays £50 to each side on an offer running to 31 October 2026, and Lloyds pays £30 to each side with no closing date announced. HSBC and NatWest pay nothing and compete on switching bonuses instead, as do Santander, Nationwide and First Direct.

Neither of the two you can get is claimable from a website. Barclays only emails codes to selected customers and its terms bar referring "a stranger or member of the general public", and the Lloyds link expires 14 days after it is generated in the app. You need a referral from someone you know. Any page offering you a working Barclays or Lloyds code is either out of date or ignoring the terms.

Do Starling, Chase or Revolut have referral schemes?

Chase does run one, but you can't rely on getting it. Its refer-a-friend offer pays £50 to each side when the new customer submits a code within 30 days of opening and deposits £1,000 within 30 days, and the referee must not have applied to Chase before 3 December 2025. The catch is eligibility: Chase's support page says the promotion appears in the app only "if you're eligible", and that it rolls offers out "to different customers at different times". Referrers get five codes and each one works exactly once, so no Chase code published on any website (including this one) can help you. You'd need one from someone you know who has been invited. That's why it isn't in the ranked table above, which only lists schemes anyone can use.

Starling spent years without one, but began trialling a refer-a-friend scheme in June 2026 that pays both sides £25, but issues codes only to customers it invites, so we haven't been able to test it. Revolut's is invitation-only and pays the referrer only, so there's nothing in it for you: its own terms call it "a one-sided campaign, where only the Revolut customer who was invited to refer a friend (not the invitee) can be awarded the Reward". The only Revolut scheme that pays both sides is its under-18 account, at £5 each way from age 13. Among UK personal current accounts, Monzo's is the only long-established referral bonus that's open to everyone.

Can I get a referral bonus and a switching bonus at the same time?

At Barclays and Lloyds, yes, and both say so in their own terms: Barclays assesses the referral reward and the switch reward independently, and Lloyds puts it plainly, "If you qualify for both, you can be paid twice." Barclays is the bigger combination, at £50 referral plus a switch bonus that is £200 until 27 August 2026.

None of the five ranked schemes above pays a switching bonus, so there the question doesn't arise. Opening a Monzo account through a referral link doesn't involve CASS, so your existing account stays open and you remain free to use it for a switching offer elsewhere later.

How many bank referral bonuses can I claim?

One per brand, as a new customer. Every scheme here is for genuinely new customers only, and previously holding an account (even a closed one) usually disqualifies you. Across different brands there's no shared limit: nothing stops one person collecting the Monzo, Yonder and Zilch rewards separately, beyond each brand's own eligibility checks.

You might also like

• Best second UK bank account to pair with Monzo
• Is Monzo worth it? A review after 9 years as a customer
• Yonder vs Amex Gold: Amex takes year one, Yonder wins the long run

Referral bonuses change and break without notice. Each guide linked above shows the date that offer was last tested, and the full comparison of every UK referral code we track is updated as schemes move.