Business bank account referral bonuses: Tide £100, Monzo £50

Affiliate disclosure: this post contains a Tide referral code. If you use it, you get £100 in account credit once you spend £500 on your Tide card within 90 days. I receive a referral reward too. It doesn't change your account terms or pricing.

Most refer-a-friend money in UK banking is on personal current accounts. Business banking has three schemes that pay the new customer anything at all, and their published terms are further apart than the headline numbers suggest.

The three that pay a new business customer

Incard is the fourth business account here with a scheme, and it is the odd one out: the referrer collects £250 once the referred business deposits £10,000 within 90 days, while the new customer gets doubled cashback for 60 days and a fast-tracked application review rather than cash.

Tide: £100, and no published cap on the referrer

Tide's terms pay the new member £100 in account credit and the referrer £100 on the free plan, rising with the subscription tier: £125 on Smart, £150 on Pro, £200 on Max. The code goes in during sign-up or within 7 days of it, the credit is validated once you have spent £500 on the Tide card within 90 days of opening the account, and payment lands within 8 weeks of that validation.

Two details separate it from the other two. Tide's terms limit the reward to one per business but set no cap on how many referrals one member can make, where Monzo caps the referrer at three a month. And the £500 is card spend, not a deposit: it has to run through the Tide Mastercard, so a balance parked in the account does nothing for it.

That is the condition to read before you count on the money. If the Tide card becomes the card you buy stock, software and fuel on, £500 in three months is a low bar and the £100 is the largest guaranteed sign-up reward in UK business banking. If you are opening the account to hold a company balance and pay the odd invoice, the credit will not arrive.

The code and the full step-by-step are on the Tide referral code page, which pays £100 in business account credit, and my Tide review covers the account itself: the free plan's five transfers and three invoices a month, the paid tiers, and the fact that Tide is an e-money institution rather than a bank, so balances carry safeguarding rather than FSCS cover (the government-backed £85,000 guarantee that applies to bank deposits).

Monzo Business: £50, on the easiest condition of the three

Monzo runs a separate business referral scheme from its personal one, on separate terms. The referred business receives £50 for opening a Monzo Business account, adding money and spending on the Monzo Business card within the first 30 days of claiming the referral. ATM withdrawals, money transfers and virtual card spend are excluded, so it takes a real card purchase.

The referrer's side is where it tightens: £50 per referral to a maximum of £150 a calendar month, which is three referrals, and each link works for 10 people a month before it stops paying anyone. Both limits reset on the 1st, so this is a rate rather than a lifetime ceiling. The referrer's own Monzo Business account has to have been open for at least 7 days, and a referred business can claim once, on its first account.

Read against Tide, this is half the money for a fraction of the spend. Tide asks for £500 through the card in 90 days; Monzo asks for one qualifying card payment in 30.

Note which scheme is which. Monzo's personal refer-a-friend pays a mystery reward of £20, £50 or £100 and runs on its own terms; the Monzo referral code page covers that one, and opening a personal account is a prerequisite for a Monzo Business account anyway.

Starling: £25, and business accounts are in

Starling's refer-a-friend scheme pays £25 to each side, and its terms define an eligible account as "a Starling personal, business or sole trader current account". Joint, teen, Under 16s, savings and currency accounts are excluded. The qualifying steps are not fixed in the general terms: Starling sets them per promotion in the referral message, and lists setting up direct debits or making payments from the account as examples. The terms also reserve the right to introduce a limit on referrals, so there is no standing cap to quote.

This one is listed but not ranked, because it fails the test this site runs on: we have not been able to test it. Starling began trialling the scheme in 2026 and rolled it out to randomly selected customers, so there is no code we can publish. Our Starling referral page will carry one as soon as we have it.

Incard: the referrer's £250 is not your £250

Incard is a business-only e-money institution aimed at e-commerce sellers, agencies and creators. Its referral pays the two sides in different currencies: the new business gets doubled (2x) cashback on card spend for 60 days plus a fast-tracked application review, and the referrer gets £250 once that business deposits £10,000 within 90 days.

I am direct about this on the Incard referral code page: that £250 is the largest referrer bounty on this site, it is gated on a deposit most sole traders will never make, and your own side of it is a temporary perk rather than money. It earns its place on this list and not near the top of it.

Which one actually pays you most

For a sole trader or limited company that will trade through the account, Tide's £100 is the answer: it is double Monzo Business's £50, it is the only one of the three with no published cap on the referrer's side, and £500 of card spend in 90 days is roughly £167 a month through a card you were going to use.

For an account that will sit close to idle, the ranking inverts. Monzo Business's £50 needs one card payment in 30 days and lands; Tide's £100 needs £500 of spend that will not happen, and an unqualified referral pays nothing at all. The bigger number is only bigger if you meet its condition.

Nothing stops you doing both. A sole trader can hold more than one business account, and the two schemes are independent: £150 across Tide and Monzo Business is available to anyone willing to run £500 through one card and one payment through the other.

The business accounts that pay you nothing

Three accounts that come up in the same searches have no new-customer referral reward as of August 2026.

• Mettle (NatWest's free business account) publishes no refer-a-friend scheme.
• ANNA Money publishes an affiliate programme for partners, not a referral bonus for new customers.
• Revolut Business runs referrals, but its own promotion terms call it "a one-sided campaign, where only the Referrer (not the Referee or Business) can be awarded the Reward". Signing up through one gets you nothing.

The absence is worth knowing before you pick an account on a bonus you have read about elsewhere. All three are decent accounts, and none of them will pay you to open one.

Business account referral bonus FAQs

Which UK business bank account has the biggest referral bonus?

Tide, at £100 in account credit for the new customer. Monzo Business pays £50 and Starling £25. Tide's is also the only one of the three whose terms set no cap on how many referrals one member can make, though the reward is limited to one per business.

Does Monzo Business have a referral bonus?

Yes, and it is separate from the personal Monzo referral. Monzo's Business Referral Scheme pays the referred business £50 for opening a Monzo Business account, adding money and making a card payment within 30 days of claiming the referral, with ATM withdrawals, transfers and virtual card spend excluded. The referrer earns £50 per referral, up to £150 a calendar month.

Does Starling's refer-a-friend scheme cover business accounts?

Yes. Starling's refer-a-friend terms list "a Starling personal, business or sole trader current account" as eligible, and exclude joint, teen, Under 16s, savings and currency accounts. The scheme pays £25 to each side. We have not been able to test it, because Starling rolled the trial out to selected customers and there is no code to publish.

Do I have to spend £500 to get the Tide £100?

Yes. Tide validates the reward once the new member has spent £500 on the Tide card within 90 days of opening the business account, and pays within 8 weeks of that. Approval alone does not trigger it, and money sitting in the account does not count: it has to be card spend.

Can a sole trader claim these bonuses?

Tide and Starling both cover sole traders, and Monzo Business is open to UK sole traders and UK-registered limited companies. Tide additionally covers partnerships, which Monzo Business does not. Each scheme pays once per business, so the limit is the number of accounts you are prepared to open rather than a shared cap.

Is a referral bonus taxable for a business?

Account credit paid into a business account is business income, so it belongs in your books like any other receipt. The amounts here (£25 to £100) are small enough that this is a bookkeeping line rather than a decision, but it is your accountant's call, not ours.

You might also like

• Is Tide worth it? A hands-on business account review
• Monzo Business for freelancers: a review from a real sole trader
• Best UK bank referral bonuses in 2026: every scheme we've tested

Sources

Our weekly verification covers the referral schemes we publish codes for, which here is Tide and Incard. The other schemes on this page are sourced against each provider's own published terms instead.

• Tide refer-a-friend terms (opens in new tab): the £100 to each side, the tiered referrer amounts on Smart, Pro and Max, the £500 card spend within 90 days, the 7-day window for entering the code, payment within 8 weeks, and one reward per business
• Monzo Business Referral Scheme terms (opens in new tab) (v1.3): the £50 to the referred business, the qualifying card payment and its exclusions, the £150-a-month referrer maximum, the 10-people-a-month link limit and their reset on the 1st, and the referrer's 7-day account age
• Starling refer-a-friend terms (opens in new tab): the £25 to each side, the eligible account types including business and sole trader, the excluded account types, and that qualifying steps are set per promotion
• Incard referral programme terms (opens in new tab): the boosted cashback period and the referrer bounty gated on the £10,000 deposit
• Revolut Business Referrals Promotion (opens in new tab): that the campaign is one-sided and only the referrer is rewarded
• Mettle (opens in new tab) and ANNA Money (opens in new tab): that neither publishes a new-customer referral reward
• My own Tide account, opened in 2022 with a referral code: what the sign-up and the reward wait actually looked like