The right account for crypto depends on which way the money is going, and each direction has a clear pick among the nine providers we checked.
Card payments, bank transfers and money coming back from an exchange fall under different rules, often at the same bank. So pick the account for the job you need it to do, not for a crypto-friendly label.
If your company is itself an exchange, broker or miner, none of the nine providers we checked publishes a way in.
Crypto-Friendly Banks UK at a Glance
| Bank | Policy covers | Card payments | Bank transfers | Money in from exchanges | Published limit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Barclays | Personal and business | Yes, within limit | Yes, within limit: £2,500 a transfer, £10,000 a month across all accounts | Counts to the same limit | £10,000 a month per card, in and out |
| NatWest | Personal, business, commercial | Yes, within limit | Yes, within limit | Not restricted | £1,000 a day, £5,000 per 30 days |
| Revolut | Business | Not published | Not published | No for fiat from crypto trading | Buy in-app instead; no published trading fee |
| Starling | Personal, joint, business, sole trader | No | No | Not published | Buying and selling not supported |
| Tide | Business | No, blocked at the card | No | No | All crypto activity excluded |
| Zempler | Business | Not published | Not published | Not published | Crypto currency traders excluded |
| ANNA | Business | Not published | Not published | Not published | Crypto businesses excluded |
| Santander | Personal only | Yes, within limit | Yes, within limit | Allowed, including from Binance | £1,000 a transaction, £3,000 per 30 days |
| Monzo | Personal only | Yes on personal | Yes on personal | Not published | £5,000 per 30 days, personal only |
| Every policy read at the provider’s own help centre, eligibility page or terms in October 2026. The Santander and Monzo rows are personal-account policies, shown for reference only. “Not published” means the provider doesn’t address that channel publicly, which isn’t the same as permission. Limits from Barclays, NatWest, Santander and Monzo; other sources are linked provider by provider below. | |||||
Which UK Banks Allow Crypto Payments?
Barclays and NatWest are the only banks we checked that publish a crypto limit for business customers. Barclays’ limit is the larger, but the two count in different ways, so match them to how often you buy as well as how much.
Barclays. A business debit card can make £10,000 a month of crypto transactions, with money in and out counted together. The limit applies to each card separately, and Barclays publishes no cap on a single card payment (Barclays card policy, checked 5 October 2026).
Bank transfers to exchanges have had their own limit since 2 December 2025: £2,500 a transfer and £10,000 a calendar month across all your Barclays accounts, business payments included (Barclays transfer policy). Barclaycard has blocked crypto since 27 June 2025, though Barclays doesn’t say whether business Barclaycards are included.
NatWest. Faster Payments and debit-card payments to the exchanges NatWest treats as higher risk are limited to £1,000 a day and £5,000 in any 30 days, for each account. The rule has applied to personal, business and commercial customers since 16 March 2023 (NatWest crypto policy, checked 5 October 2026).
NatWest won’t say which exchanges are on that list, so the same payment can clear to one exchange and fail at another. Its credit and charge cards have been blocked for crypto since February 2018.
Which one suits you. For an occasional larger purchase, the Barclays card goes further, because NatWest holds you to £1,000 a day at a higher-risk exchange. If you top up every week, both allowances fill up: at NatWest, five £1,000 payments use the whole 30 days.
Whichever bank you use, keep a second route open for a time-sensitive payment rather than find out on the day that it has been stopped.
Personal accounts only. Two more banks publish crypto limits, but only for personal customers, which tells you nothing about how a business account is treated:
- Santander allows £1,000 a transaction and £3,000 in any 30 days to UK exchanges, and blocks payments to Binance while still accepting money back from it (source, checked 5 October 2026).
- Monzo allows £5,000 to crypto exchanges in any 30 days, and says it can’t change that figure. Monzo publishes no equivalent allowance for business accounts (source, checked 5 October 2026).
Which Banks Block or Restrict Crypto Payments?
Starling and Tide refuse crypto payments outright, so neither can pay an exchange for you. Either can still run the rest of your banking, but the crypto payment has to go through another provider.
Monzo Business, Zempler and ANNA say nothing about the payments themselves. What they publish is a list of businesses they won’t bank, and crypto firms are on all three lists.
- Starling: “We no longer support the buying and selling of cryptocurrencies by debit card, bank transfer in GBP, or by bank transfer in other currencies.” A declined payment isn’t charged for (source).
- Tide: “We’re unable to service businesses that are actively issuing or exchanging virtual currencies”, and the exclusion reaches any transaction with crypto assets or exchanges. Tide cards are declined at crypto merchants (source).
- Monzo Business: won’t support “currency exchanges including virtual currencies, and money services business”. The word crypto never appears, which is why the policy is easy to miss (source).
- Zempler: lists “Crypto currency traders” and “Money service businesses” among industries it won’t bank. That names traders, not every business that touches crypto (source).
- ANNA: doesn’t support businesses “involved in cryptocurrency”, and its customer agreement bars managing assets through cryptocurrency (source).
Starling’s business scope is the weakest evidence in this section. The statement names no account type itself; only Starling’s help-centre data tags it to business and sole-trader accounts.
I read that as covering business accounts, but it isn’t a line you could show a relationship manager, so treat it as likely rather than settled.
Why Revolut Is the Clearest Positive Option
Revolut is the clearest positive option for one job: buying and holding crypto with company money. Eligible businesses buy, hold and sell inside the app, and Revolut says the holdings are business assets held in the company’s name.
Because nothing is paid to an outside exchange, no bank’s card or transfer limit comes into it. Two tests decide whether it works for you, and either one can rule the account out before you apply:
- Where your money came from. Money that came from crypto dealing or trading elsewhere can’t be paid in, so Revolut is the wrong account for cashed-out exchange proceeds.
- What your business does. Revolut accepts companies that accept or pay with crypto, non-fungible-token platforms, regulated and non-custodial wallets, blockchain developers and crypto media. It refuses exchanges, brokers, dealers, ramps, crypto machines, miners, trading firms, cryptoasset managers and unregulated custodial wallets.
Cost. The account costs £10 a month on Basic, £30 on Grow and £90 on Scale when billed annually, and there’s no free tier. If you keep your main bank and open Revolut only for crypto, that is an extra monthly bill.
We couldn’t price the trading itself: the plan comparison table has no crypto row, and we found no published UK business crypto trading fee. That is the gap I would want closed before committing.
Protection. Sterling held with Revolut Bank UK Ltd may qualify for Financial Services Compensation Scheme protection up to £120,000. The crypto is provided by Revolut Ltd, isn’t a bank deposit, and has no protection against falls in value or ordinary investment losses. Our Revolut Business review covers the account beyond crypto. Open a Revolut Business account
Does the Bank Allow the Payment, or the Business?
These are two different questions and banks answer them separately, which is why a bank can process your exchange payment on Monday and decline your account application on Friday.
| Will it process the payment? | Will it bank the business? |
|---|---|
| Decided by fraud and payment controls, per transaction | Decided by onboarding and financial-crime teams, once |
| Barclays and NatWest publish limits, so the answer is yes within them | Neither publishes any route for a crypto-native company |
| Applies to a card payment, transfer or incoming payment | Applies to an exchange, broker, miner, custodian, trading firm or wallet provider |
| Can change without notice and varies by destination exchange | Set out in published eligibility and excluded-industry lists |
| If crypto is what your company does rather than something it occasionally buys, the right-hand column governs, and no mainstream bank we checked publishes a route. | |
An exchange, brokerage, mining operation or trading firm has no published onboarding route with the mainstream providers compared here. That leaves specialist banks and electronic money institutions, where eligibility depends on the exact activity the business carries out.
What Does “Crypto-Friendly” Actually Mean?
“Crypto-friendly” does not describe a single permission. A bank may allow you to pay an exchange while refusing incoming trading proceeds or declining a company whose main business is crypto.
Taking customer crypto through a processor does not settle the account question. The arrangement works only when the bank’s published eligibility covers your underlying business activity, not merely the sterling payment arriving from the processor.
| What you want to do | Who allows it |
|---|---|
| Buy crypto with a debit card at an exchange | Barclays and NatWest within limits; Santander on personal accounts; Starling and Tide block it |
| Send a bank transfer to an exchange | Barclays and NatWest within limits; Santander on personal accounts; Starling and Tide refuse |
| Receive money back from an exchange | NatWest and Santander don’t restrict it; Barclays counts it to the card limit; Revolut refuses crypto-trading fiat |
| Buy and hold crypto inside the account | Revolut only |
| Accept crypto payments from your customers | Potentially, through a processor that settles sterling to you, provided the bank accepts the underlying business activity |
| Open an account as a crypto company | None of the nine publishes a route |
| Positions as published in October 2026. Allowing one of these says nothing about the others, and an exchange being registered with the Financial Conduct Authority doesn’t oblige any bank to pay it. | |
How to Reduce the Risk of a Crypto Payment Being Reviewed
None of this stops a bank blocking a payment, and I would not trust a page that told you otherwise. What it does is reduce the number of reasons the bank has to look twice.
- Use an exchange account in exactly the same name as the bank account paying it.
- Keep the payment consistent with how you described the account when you opened it.
- Retain transaction records and source-of-funds evidence before you need them, not after.
- Don’t mix customer money with company or personal money moving to an exchange.
- Check the bank’s current published limit before a large payment, because these change without notice.
- Where the policy is silent on what you want to do, get written confirmation rather than assuming.
If a payment is stopped, the bank may not tell you which rule or which exchange list caused it, so the steps above are about giving it fewer reasons to stop the next one.
Are Bank Deposits and Cryptocurrency Protected?
Your sterling may be protected; your crypto is not. Cryptoassets are not bank deposits, so the Financial Services Compensation Scheme doesn’t cover them at any provider on this page, and the protection that matters for the cash depends on which firm actually holds it.
| Provider | Who actually holds the money | Protection on cash |
|---|---|---|
| Revolut | Revolut Bank UK Ltd, a bank since 11 March 2026 | £120,000 on sterling. Crypto sits with Revolut Ltd and is not a protected deposit |
| Barclays | Barclays Bank UK PLC | £120,000 |
| NatWest | National Westminster Bank Plc | £120,000 |
| Santander | Santander UK plc | £120,000 |
| Starling | Starling Bank Limited | £120,000 |
| Monzo | Monzo Bank Ltd | £120,000 |
| Zempler | Zempler Bank Limited | £120,000 |
| Tide | ClearBank Ltd or PrePay Technologies Ltd | Split. ClearBank £120,000; PrePay safeguarded only |
| ANNA | PayrNet Limited issues the e-money | Safeguarded. ANNA Savings, via Griffin Bank, is protected |
| Deposit protection is £120,000 per eligible depositor per authorised firm, a limit that rose from £85,000 on 1 December 2025 (Financial Services Compensation Scheme). Entities checked October 2026. | ||
Tide catches people out. Whether your money is protected or only safeguarded depends on which sort code you were issued when you joined.
Check the sort code and your account terms to see whether the funds sit with ClearBank or are issued as e-money through PrePay Technologies.
Safeguarding is a different mechanism rather than a weaker version of the same one. Your money is kept apart from the firm’s own funds, so in principle it comes back if the firm fails.
Safeguarding gives you less certainty about when the money will return. No compensation scheme sets a payment deadline for the administrator, so funds needed for payroll or another fixed bill may not be available when the business needs them.
Revolut Business Crypto Policy: What It Allows and Restricts
Revolut is the only mainstream provider in this comparison that publishes a built-in business crypto service. That supports buying and holding in-app, but it does not settle whether external crypto transfers are available.
Revolut Business Basic Account
Revolut’s published position on external transfers contradicts itself. Detailed help pages walk through crypto deposits and withdrawals step by step, gated by plan and location in a way Revolut never spells out, while another live article says Business accounts can’t send or receive crypto at all.
We can’t say which is current, so if moving crypto off the platform matters to you, get availability for your plan and country confirmed in writing before you open the account. Compare Revolut Business plans
Frequently Asked Questions
Which UK banks allow crypto payments?
Barclays and NatWest do, within limits they publish for business customers as well as personal ones. Barclays allows £10,000 a month on each debit card; NatWest allows £1,000 a day and £5,000 in any 30 days to the exchanges it treats as higher risk. Starling and Tide refuse crypto payments. Santander publishes a limit for personal accounts only.
Which bank is best for moving money to a crypto exchange?
Barclays, for most businesses, because £10,000 a month on the card goes further than NatWest’s £5,000 in 30 days. Pay by card for anything over £2,500, since a Barclays bank transfer to an exchange is capped at that amount. If you want the crypto itself rather than a payment to an exchange, Revolut Business sells it inside the account.
Can I receive money from Coinbase or Kraken into a UK bank account?
Usually yes, and it is less restricted than paying out. NatWest says its limits don’t stop you moving money from a crypto wallet into your account, and Santander accepts money back from Binance while blocking payments to it. At Barclays, money coming back to a card counts against the same £10,000. Revolut is the exception: it won’t accept money that came from crypto trading elsewhere.
Which banks allow debit-card crypto purchases?
Barclays and NatWest, within their limits, and Santander on personal accounts. Starling doesn’t support crypto by debit card, and Tide cards are declined at crypto merchants. Credit cards are a separate matter: NatWest has blocked crypto on them since February 2018 and Barclaycard since 27 June 2025.
Why has my bank blocked a crypto payment?
Usually because of where the money was going. NatWest restricts payments only to the exchanges it judges highest risk and doesn’t publish that list, so the same payment can clear to one exchange and fail at another. Going over a limit, or paying an exchange account in a different name, can also trigger a block, and the bank may not tell you which applied.
Does an exchange being registered with the Financial Conduct Authority mean a bank has to accept the payment?
No. Registration is what lets the exchange operate in the UK; it is not an instruction to anybody else’s bank. The regulator says registration isn’t an endorsement, and banks set their own risk rules on top of it, which is why NatWest can restrict payments to some registered exchanges and not others.
Does the Financial Services Compensation Scheme protect cryptocurrency?
No. The scheme protects eligible cash deposits at an authorised firm, up to £120,000 per depositor since 1 December 2025, and crypto is not a deposit. At Revolut, sterling held with Revolut Bank UK Ltd is protected, but the crypto service is provided by Revolut Ltd and is not, and Revolut says some newer customers may still be placed on an e-money account with Revolut Ltd.
Can a limited company buy Bitcoin from a business account?
Yes, where the provider permits it. Revolut Business is the most direct route, with holdings treated as business assets in the company’s name; Barclays and NatWest allow business debit-card purchases within their limits. Agree the accounting treatment with your accountant first, because a volatile asset on the balance sheet is a reporting question as well as a banking one.
What is the difference between a crypto-friendly bank and a crypto business account?
A crypto-friendly bank will process your crypto payments. A crypto business account means the bank has taken on a crypto company as a customer, which none of the nine providers here publishes a route for. Revolut comes closest, accepting some crypto-related firms such as blockchain developers while naming exchanges, brokers and miners as excluded.
How we checked UK bank crypto policies
The providers. Nine UK banks and account providers: Revolut, Barclays, NatWest, Santander, Starling, Monzo, Tide, Zempler and ANNA. Each policy is labelled with the account scope its own source states, personal, business or both.
We separated card payments, bank transfers and incoming funds because a provider can permit one and refuse another. Where a provider publishes nothing on a channel, the tables say so rather than inferring permission from silence.
Specialist providers that bank crypto-native companies are outside this page’s scope. We hold verified research on several, but Business Expert has no commercial relationship with any of them and the page is about which banks permit crypto payments.
Regulatory status. Every firm reference number here was confirmed against the Financial Conduct Authority register extracts for credit institutions, e-money firms and payment-services firms, dated 28 July 2026. All are current.
The register extracts establish each firm’s regulatory status, but they do not show every restriction attached to an individual provider. We therefore use them for status only, not as evidence that a business or transaction will be accepted.
How we weighed the evidence. A provider’s own current business policy, eligibility page or terms outranks everything else. A personal-account policy is never treated as evidence about a business account, however similar the wording.
Two sources needed more than a read. Every path on Starling’s help site returns the same page shell, so we took the account scope of its crypto answer from the accountTypes field in its own help-centre data, which lists BUSINESS and SOLE_TRADER. For Revolut’s business crypto trading fee, the help centre points to the fees page, which points to a crypto fees page that links back to itself, so we report the fee as unpublished rather than quote a figure.
What the labels mean. “Explicitly supported” means a current published business policy covers the use case. “Restricted transactional use” means the transaction is permitted within published limits.
That isn’t the same as the provider accepting a crypto company. “Not publicly confirmed” means we found no published position either way, and “Unsupported / prohibited” means the provider publishes an exclusion.
What we did and didn’t test. We hold and use business accounts with several of the digital providers here, and the fee and feature detail reflects that.
We haven’t applied for an account as a crypto-native business anywhere, so nothing here is a report of how such an application went. Policy claims come from published sources, read in full in October 2026 and quoted rather than summarised where the wording carries weight.
Change log. 2 November 2026: body rewritten around one pick per job: Barclays for paying an exchange, Revolut for buying crypto in the account, NatWest for receiving exchange proceeds. Santander and Monzo moved to the foot of the table as personal-account policies. No figure changed.
Change log. 29 July 2026, second revision: repositioned around which banks permit crypto payments, after Search Console showed the page ranked page one for that question and page four for crypto-company onboarding. Santander added as personal-account context.
Change log. 29 July 2026: Tide, ANNA, Starling, Monzo and Zempler removed from all positive recommendations after we checked their published policies at source and found they contradict the previous ranking.
Barclays and NatWest added as restricted transactional options with published limits, replacing a blanket “avoid traditional banks” claim. Unsourced claims about high-street banks routinely closing crypto accounts removed.
Revolut’s external-funds restriction, unsupported-industry list and crypto protection gap added. Deposit protection updated to £120,000 throughout.
Update cadence. We re-check every provider policy here at least quarterly, and sooner when a provider changes its terms. Acceptance always remains subject to the provider’s own underwriting and can change without notice.
Some links here are affiliate links and earn us a commission if you open an account. They don’t buy a place in the tables above.
Revolut is the only affiliate on this page. Barclays and NatWest are recommended for paying an exchange on their published limits alone, and several providers we hold commercial relationships with were removed from the recommendations on 29 July 2026. See our editorial policy.
If crypto is incidental to what your business does, the wider comparisons below will serve you better than this page.