CAF Bank Business Account Review (2026): Fees, Eligibility and Verdict

Our Verdict on the CAF Bank Business Bank Account

Choose CAF Bank if you’re a registered charity, CIO, CIC, CASC, or exempt religious body that needs a bank whose entire customer book is the third sector.

You pay £5 a month for that alignment. No free period. No fee-free tier. That’s the deal.

We confirmed every figure on this page from cafonline.org in May 2026: the £5 fee, the 0.20% credit interest, the eligibility list, the card limits. Not paraphrased from comparison sites.

You should open a CAF Bank account when the charity-only mandate genuinely matters to your trustees or your funders. Surplus returns to a parent charity rather than to private shareholders. That matters in funder conversations.

You should weigh two things against it. There’s no standalone CAF Bank mobile app — HID Approve is a 2FA token, not a banking app, so your day-to-day banking still runs on a desktop portal.

Picture your finance lead on a Tuesday morning, logging in at quarter-end to push payroll out before the supplier deadline, then switching to their phone to tap HID Approve. That’s how trustees actually authorise payments. No native mobile banking.

You also need to weigh the June 2025 online-banking migration. Charity customers were locked out for an extended period. The Financial Ombudsman Service has since required CAF Bank to pay compensation to affected charities. It’s not the same as a clean track record.

If your charity qualifies for the free Co-operative Bank’s Charity and Community account, that’s your real comparison point. We cover it directly below.

Key Pros and Cons

Who CAF Bank Is Best For

You should pick CAF Bank when charity-only banking is a feature, not a footnote.

You’re a trustee who cares about where the charity’s cash sits. You’re a funder-facing finance officer who has to answer questions about banking arrangements. You’re a governance lead who needs a bank built around trustee mandates rather than a personal-banking app retrofitted for business use.

If your charity holds meaningful unrestricted reserves, the 0.20% AER on the CAF Cash Account can offset the £5 monthly fee. We work through the maths in the Fees section below.

You should not pick CAF Bank if you’re a standard for-profit business. CAF Bank’s page excludes standard limited companies, sole traders, partnerships, and unincorporated associations without exempt or excepted status.

If you see CAF in a charity-banking list and you run a normal SME, you can’t open an account.

CAF isn’t right either for charities that need a strong mobile experience. If your trustees expect phone-first payment authorisation, look at the Co-operative Bank’s Charity and Community account instead.

CAF Bank Account Eligibility and Application

Who Can Open a CAF Bank Account

You should check your structure against four cumulative tests before you start.

The cafonline.org eligibility page requires your organisation to be charitable or have a social purpose and not operate for the benefit of shareholders. You must be based primarily in the UK with a UK business address. Your account contact must be a UK resident aged 18 or over.

You must also be registered with a UK charity regulator, the FCA, as a CIC, as a CASC, or be exempt or excepted from registration.

You can qualify via one of five recognised routes in practice.

If you’re a registered charity — including Charitable Incorporated Organisations (CIOs) and charitable trusts — you qualify through the Charity Commission for England and Wales, OSCR in Scotland, or CCNI in Northern Ireland.

Your registration number, governing document, and proof of UK address go into the application pack.

You can apply as a Community Interest Company (CIC) through Companies House registration plus articles of association that include the community-interest lock. The standard limited company route won’t work here.

Your Community Amateur Sports Club (CASC) qualifies with HMRC CASC registration.

Churches and religious bodies recognised as exempt or excepted qualify when you can evidence that status alongside your governing rules.

If you’re FCA-registered in your own right — friendly societies and certain credit unions, for example — you can apply on that basis.

You should verify your exclusion before you apply. CAF Bank won’t bank standard limited companies, sole traders, unregistered trusts, unincorporated associations that aren’t exempt or excepted, or Individual Service Funds. We confirmed this exclusion list verbatim from cafonline.org in May 2026.

You can’t escalate a refusal — these are excluded at eligibility screening, not deprioritised.

If you’re a limited company without charity status, look at the Co-operative Bank’s Charity and Community account instead — it accepts a broader social-economy scope.

What You Need to Apply

You choose your application route first: fully online, or download a PDF pack and post it back.

If you submit a paper application, CAF Bank notes it’s sometimes processed faster than online ones — an unusual statement in 2026, and a useful tell about how the online infrastructure has historically performed.

You gather your documents before you start.

Your registered charity needs the regulator’s registration number, the governing document (trust deed or constitution), and proof of UK operational address.

Your CIC needs Companies House registration details and articles of association demonstrating the community-interest lock.

Churches and unincorporated bodies recognised as exempt or excepted need the constitution or governing rules plus evidence of charitable aims.

You plan trustee identity checks into the timeline.

All your key parties must be 18 or over and UK-resident. If an electronic ID check fails, you submit certified copies of physical ID instead — expect delay.

You should pencil in five working days under optimal conditions, up to eight weeks for complex structures or manual underwriting.

Don’t time a CAF Bank switch close to a year-end audit or a grant disbursement. That’s a real cash-flow risk if onboarding stalls.

CAF Bank Account Fees and Pricing

Monthly Fees and Plan Options

You should budget for £5 a month from day one. The CAF Cash Account is a single sterling current account with a flat £5 monthly fee.

You don’t get a free introductory period, a waiver for very small charities, or a balance threshold that removes the fee. We verified this from cafonline.org/home/caf-bank/current-account in May 2026.

Three years of that costs you £180 — versus £0 at the Co-operative Bank’s Charity and Community account if your charity qualifies for it. That’s the trade-off you’re paying for CAF’s third-sector-only mandate and its 0.20% credit interest.

You earn back the fee on credit balances. The CAF Cash Account pays 0.20% gross/AER (variable), calculated daily and paid quarterly as a gross amount. We confirmed this rate from cafonline.org in May 2026.

If you hold £100,000 in your current account, you pick up roughly £200 of interest a year — net positive against the £60 of fees. We calculated this from CAF’s published 0.20% AER rate. At lower balances, the fee dominates.

You should run the maths on your own balance before committing.

If your reserves sit in the linked CAF Gold Account, your rate is materially better at 1.55% gross / 1.56% AER variable. Instant access. No minimum balance. Requires the Cash Account as the operational account.

Transaction Fees and Charges

You move money for free on UK electronic rails.

Your BACS, Faster Payments, standing orders, direct debits, and ATM withdrawals via the Mastercard Business Card carry no per-item CAF charge — an ATM operator might still apply its own fee.

If your charity runs monthly payroll plus weekly supplier payments and grant disbursements, you pay nothing extra on top of the £5 account fee. That’s a real saving against challenger accounts that meter transfers.

You should watch the deposit allowances. CAF’s FAQ on cafonline.org confirms CAF doesn’t charge for cash up to £2,000 in a single calendar month, nor for up to 20 cheques in a single calendar month. We verified those limits in May 2026.

If you exceed those allowances, excess fees apply per the current Tariff of Charges. You should check the Tariff before relying on a higher volume.

You must verify CHAPS, international, and excess deposit fees directly with CAF Bank before relying on them. The FAQ acknowledges these line items exist in the Tariff PDF, but we couldn’t locate the current Tariff on cafonline.org via search in May 2026.

You should get the live number rather than paste a competitor’s figure into your own budget.

When your outbound international payments leave the bank, they go through Convera (the former Western Union Business Solutions). Convera’s margin and any intermediary-bank deductions sit on top of CAF’s own fee — we cover the structural disclaimer in the Overseas Payments section below.

You should get a written all-in quote before sending any large grant abroad — the amount your recipient receives may be lower than the amount you sent.

When you compare this against Starling Business — permanently free and zero domestic transfer fees — the trade-off is the charity-only mandate, the FSCS-protected interest, and the trustee governance built into the online portal.

CAF Bank Features and Business Banking Tools

Invoicing and Expense Management

You should plan to run invoicing in a separate accounting package — CAF Bank doesn’t offer an in-app invoicing tool.

Your CAF Cash Account is a current account: sort code, account number, Mastercard Business Card, online banking portal. No bolt-on invoicing or expense management. We verified this from cafonline.org in May 2026.

You pair it with Xero, QuickBooks, Sage, AccountsIQ, or a charity-specific tool like Liberty Accounts. Your invoices and receipts live in the accounting software. The bank handles payments and statements.

If you want invoicing inside the banking app, CAF isn’t the bank. The Co-operative Bank’s Charity and Community account doesn’t have it either. Tide and ANNA do, but only for SMEs.

You should look at the Approval Matrix instead. CAF Bank’s online banking lets your trustees set thresholds where one drafts a payment and another approves it.

That’s the feature your charity will care about most.

Integrations and Accounting Software

You can connect QuickBooks Online directly via Open Banking. We confirmed this from cafonline.org/home/caf-bank/current-account/open-banking in May 2026.

Both the CAF Cash Account and CAF Gold Account link through — if you manage multiple charities, you can create separate Open Banking consents for each.

Avoid planning around a native Xero feed. The CAF Open Banking page makes no mention of Xero. Xero’s own product-ideas forum carries an outstanding feature request from CAF Bank customers asking Xero to build a direct feed.

Picture your bookkeeper at month-end exporting CSV statements from the CAF portal and uploading them into Xero by hand. That’s the actual Xero workflow.

If you use another accounting platform, you authorise the relevant aggregator through CAF’s Open Banking flow. CAF’s page is explicit: “the only TPPs who will have access to your information will be regulated organisations that you have engaged and authorised.”

You should set up HID Approve on a smartphone before you start the QuickBooks link. The connection authenticates through HID Approve as Strong Customer Authentication — the same 2FA layer CAF uses for desktop banking.

Skip that step and the flow stalls.

CAF Bank Card Usage and Payments

Spending, Transfers and Limits

You issue Mastercard Business Cards to your trustees and finance staff — not Visa, unlike most UK high-street business accounts. You can request multiple cards subject to the per-account daily limits.

£300 per card per day and £1,000 per day per account on ATM withdrawals — regardless of how many cards your charity holds.

You don’t pay CAF Bank for the withdrawal itself — your ATM operator might still apply its own fee. We verified these limits from cafonline.org in May 2026.

For cash and cheque deposits, you use the agency-branch network. CAF Bank routes over-the-counter deposits through HSBC branches under sort code 40-52-40 (England and Wales) and RBS branches under sort code 83-91-46 (Scotland), plus the UK Post Office network.

Take pre-printed paying-in slips with you. You don’t get a CAF Bank branch to walk into — the deposits are agency banking.

You should arrange any overdraft before you need it — secured (against property) or unsecured (against the balance sheet). Rates are negotiated case by case.

If you’re applying under cash-flow pressure, that’s a real practical risk — harder than setting it up when reserves are stable.

Overseas Payments and FX Fees

You should plan international payments as a deliberate process, not a one-click in-app transfer.

CAF Bank routes your outbound international payments through Convera (the former Western Union Business Solutions). You start the payment via a Priority Payment form rather than online.

Picture your finance officer at month-end emailing the Priority Payment form for a grant going to a recipient charity in Kenya, then waiting for Convera’s confirmation. That’s how every outbound international payment moves at CAF.

You should get an all-in quote in writing before sending a large grant abroad. CAF’s FAQ acknowledges: “Total fees can vary as intermediary or recipient bank fees might affect the final payment amount received by the beneficiary.” That’s a structural disclaimer.

You should make sure your recipient charity understands the amount they receive may be lower than the amount you sent.

If you transfer grants abroad more than two or three times a year, you should set up a dedicated FX account alongside CAF Bank. CAF doesn’t publish a fixed FX margin, but full-service bank FX carries a materially wider margin than mid-market-rate providers like Wise or WorldFirst.

You should confirm inbound transfer fees with CAF before relying on them. Inbound international transfers are accepted but carry their own line-item fees per the Tariff.

If you receive grant funding from international donors regularly, that fee is part of your funding model.

CAF Bank Customer Reviews and Ratings

You should weigh the June 2025 IT migration before you switch.

If you were a CAF Bank customer on 9 June 2025, the platform migration locked you out for an extended period. Civil Society News reported the impact. We confirmed the date and customer impact from civilsociety.co.uk.

If your treasurer logged in on that Friday afternoon at month-end to authorise payroll, the new portal wouldn’t accept their credentials.

You would have been one of thousands locked out: CAF Bank’s roughly 14,000 charity customers couldn’t process payroll, issue grants, or access operational reserves. That was the lived experience for charity finance teams.

You should know how political the fallout got. MPs filed an Early Day Motion calling on the FCA to address widespread banking difficulties facing the charity sector.

If you assume that was a one-off, the Financial Ombudsman Service tells a different story — it required CAF Bank to pay compensation, including £750 to Support Staffordshire. Source: civilsociety.co.uk.

You should check the current Trustpilot scores yourself before deciding. We aren’t quoting a specific star count: ratings drift daily. Look at trustpilot.com/review/www.cafonline.org for the live scores.

Treat Trustpilot signals carefully for any UK bank — you should weight them lightly. Dissatisfied customers leave reviews; the satisfied silent majority doesn’t. For CAF, the 2025-2026 numbers are an outage signal more than a steady-state satisfaction signal.

Factor in the no-branch fallback before you switch. When something goes wrong on the online portal, you don’t have a CAF Bank branch to walk into — the deposits route through HSBC and the Post Office.

That’s the structural risk you carry: a desktop-and-2FA banking experience, a sector-only customer base, a public-purpose ownership structure, and a major IT incident in living memory. Not the same as a fully clean track record.

Also Consider

FAQs