Our Verdict on the Virgin Money Business Bank Account
Virgin Money suits a new business that wants a long free start: 25 months free on the Business Current Account, then £6.50 a month with 0.35% debit-card cashback.
The £6.50 fee starts in month 26, and the cashback decides how much it costs you. At 0.35%, card spending of about £22,300 a year earns back the £78 annual fee, so a business that puts most of its costs through the card earns the fee back, while a light card user pays most of it.
Of the banks in our fee table, NatWest comes closest: it charges no monthly fee at all and waives its 35p charge per automated payment for a start-up’s first two years, while Barclays and Santander stop at 12 free months. It is not the longest offer on the high street, though: TSB’s business banking page, read on 5 November 2026, advertises a 30-month free offer.
If your turnover is under £1 million, the M Account for Business is worth weighing alongside it: no monthly account fee, no charge for standing orders, direct debits or payments in, and uncapped 0.25% cashback.
View Virgin Money →Everything below explains the trade-offs in full.
Key Pros and Cons
The strengths cluster around cost and protection: 25 months free banking, 0.35% cashback up to £500/year, free UK bank transfers, FSCS cover to £120,000, and an M Account with no monthly fee for smaller businesses.
What gives us pause is FreeAgent, or rather its absence. If your VAT and Making Tax Digital (MTD) work lives inside it, the 25 free months are worth less than they look, because Virgin Money leaves you paying for the software from the first month while NatWest includes it with the account.
Branch coverage is thin, so most cash goes in at the Post Office, at 65p per £100 plus 70p for each deposit on the business account. That works for a weekly cash drop, but it is a different routine from paying in at a NatWest counter.
Trustpilot sits at 3.0/5 from about 13,400 reviews, below Santander (3.8), Barclays (4.1), Starling (4.3) and Monzo (4.6). The Business Moneyfacts Awards named Virgin Money Best Service from a Business Bank in 2025 and again in 2026, which is an industry-judged counter to the customer score rather than a reason to discount it.
Who Virgin Money Is Best For
Virgin Money rewards a new business that wants a long free start with cashback on top. Twenty-five months of zero monthly fees buys time to build revenue before the £6.50/month switches on.
A one-person consultancy invoicing four clients a month, sterling-only, gets over two years of free banking and 0.35% back on eligible card spending. A sole trader or LTD under £1m turnover who’d rather never pay a fee should weigh the M Account for Business, which has no monthly fee, alongside it.
The fit weakens for FreeAgent users. With the software included and no monthly account fee, NatWest works out cheaper from the first month for a start-up or a business switching in, because both get two years without its per-payment charges.
It weakens again for heavy cash takings. Banking £3,000 or more weekly in cash and needing a branch counter means NatWest or Barclays put you in front of a teller, while Virgin Money sends most of that cash through the Post Office at 65p per £100.
Virgin Money Account Eligibility and Application
Both Virgin Money business accounts take sole traders, limited companies, partnerships and limited liability partnerships. Charities, clubs and societies are the gap, and it is worth knowing early: Virgin Money puts them on a separate account of its own, so nothing you read here about the 25 free months or the cashback applies to them.
So if another bank has turned you down because of an unusual structure, Virgin Money is unlikely to be the way round it. What it does not ask for is a trading history: the M Account for Business names startups and new businesses in its own eligibility terms and works off expected turnover rather than filed accounts. We re-read both eligibility pages at uk.virginmoney.com on 5 November 2026.
The legal entity matters more than usual right now. Since 2 April 2026, your account sits under Nationwide Building Society (FRN 106078), PRA and FCA authorised. That’s a full building-society licence with FSCS cover, not e-money safeguarding.
If you’re moving from a fintech, check whose licence your old balance sat under: new Tide accounts are FSCS-protected through ClearBank, while an e-money account like ANNA is safeguarded rather than covered.
Day-to-day banking runs exactly as it did before the transfer. Same sort codes, account numbers, app, support lines. Apply today and you open a Nationwide-backed account branded as Virgin Money.
Who Can Open a Virgin Money Account
The Business Current Account accepts sole traders, limited companies, partnerships and limited liability partnerships, with annual turnover under £6.5 million. It does not accept charities, clubs or societies, and it does not accept firms that hold client money; both go to separate Virgin Money accounts. You also need to be trading in England, Scotland or Wales, because the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man and Northern Ireland sit outside the offer.
The M Account for Business takes the same structures but caps turnover far lower, at under £1 million a year. That ceiling, not your legal structure, is what decides between the two products for most people. Cross it and you are on the Business Current Account, which is where the 25 free months sit anyway.
Credit checks apply for both accounts and for any overdraft request. You need to be UK-based with a UK business address, aged 18 or over, and directors must have UK addresses for verification.
What You Need to Apply
Have photo ID, proof of address, your Companies House number (for a limited company) and your expected turnover ready before you start. Virgin Money describes the online application as taking minutes, and that only holds if the documents are to hand.
Application is online for both accounts, and neither product page offers a branch or phone route in.
If you want to walk into a counter to open the account, NatWest and Barclays are the alternatives; Virgin Money’s onboarding is closer to a digital bank’s than a traditional high-street one.
Need the account live by a fixed date, such as next month’s payroll, a VAT quarter-end or a supplier payment with terms attached? Build in a buffer. The form may take minutes, but we could not find a figure on either product page for how long the account then takes to open, so do not plan around the form. Allow longer for a partnership or an LLP, which has more people to verify.
If you need an account live the same week, open a Starling or Tide first and migrate to Virgin Money once the 25-month clock is worth starting. The free period is generous enough that a short detour through a digital challenger doesn’t erase the value.
Virgin Money Account Fees and Pricing
The Business Current Account has a single monthly fee: £0 for 25 months, then £6.50 a month on the Standard Tariff, with no tiered plans or add-on bundles. We re-read that at uk.virginmoney.com on 5 November 2026.
Inside the free period you get a UK current account, debit card, free day-to-day transactions, and 0.35% cashback on debit-card spend (cap £500/year).
Standing orders, direct debits, Bacs items and incoming payments carry no charge while the free months last, which matters if your month-end runs to fifty supplier payments in one batch.
The M Account for Business is the other route: no monthly fee for a business turning over under £1 million, with 0.25% cashback. With two accounts from one provider, your turnover and your card spending decide which one wins.
Monthly Fees and Plan Options
Twenty-five months at £0 is the headline, and after that the fee is £6.50 a month. A full year at that tariff costs you £78 in fees, against Barclays’ £102 or Santander’s £119.88. Virgin Money also charges 30p per standing order, direct debit or incoming payment once the free months end, while NatWest charges no monthly fee on its standard tariff and bills 35p per automated payment instead, so Virgin Money sits in the middle on ongoing cost. The value is in the free months up front, not in the tariff that follows.
At the full £500 cashback, the £78 yearly account fee is more than covered. Reaching that cap takes about £142,857 of eligible annual spend on one debit card, so it is unlikely to constrain a typical small business.
At £12,000 of eligible annual spend, the Business Current Account earns £42; at £40,000, it earns £140. Cashback covers the £78 yearly fee from about £22,300 of spend, while on cashback alone the uncapped M Account does not overtake until annual card spending exceeds £200,000.
M Account for Business has no monthly fee at any point and its 0.25% cashback is uncapped, so you can forecast it as a straight percentage of card spend. Cash transactions, tax payments, debt repayments, money transfers and crypto purchases are all excluded, which strips out most of what a cash-heavy business actually puts through a debit card.
For a sole trader running £30,000 a year on the card, that’s £75 back with zero monthly fee to offset against it.
| Account | Monthly fee | Free period | Cashback | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Virgin Money business current account | £6.50 | 25 months | 0.35% (cap £500/yr) | – |
| Virgin Money M Account | Free | Ongoing | 0.25% | Visit site → |
| NatWest Business | £0 (35p per automated payment) | 24 months (start-ups) | None | Visit site → |
| Barclays Business | £8.50 | 12 months | None | Visit site → |
| Santander Business | £9.99 | 12 months | None listed | – |
| Starling Business | Free | Ongoing | None | Visit site → |
| All rows re-read on each bank’s own website on 5 November 2026. | ||||
Transaction Fees and Charges
Faster Payments, Bacs, direct debits, standing orders and debit-card spending carry no charge during the 25 free months. After that, the published tariff charges 30p per automated debit or credit and 10p per Bacs item sent direct or through a bureau. UK bank transfers you make yourself stay free, because the tariff charges the standing order, the direct debit and the Bacs item rather than the Faster Payment. NatWest’s standard charges put 35p on each automated payment once its own free period ends.
A small contractor running a Friday-afternoon Bacs batch of fifty supplier payments at month-end pays £5 at Virgin Money’s 10p Bacs rate and £17.50 at NatWest’s 35p. Add Virgin Money’s £6.50 fee, which NatWest does not charge, and the month still comes to £11.50 against £17.50. So at that volume the per-item saving covers the fee and leaves £6 over. The order flips below twenty-six items a month.
CHAPS payments cost £25 each on the business account (£17.50 online on the M Account), with a further £18 if you cancel or amend one afterwards. Most businesses won’t need CHAPS often, but the Business Current Account caps a transfer at £30,000 a payment in the app or online banking, so a larger same-day payment, such as a property deposit, has to go by CHAPS.
Cash deposits route via the Post Office at 65p per £100 on the business current account, or 90p per £100 on the M Account, plus 70p (95p on the M Account) for the transaction itself, and they stop at £10,000 a day and £250,000 a year.
Weekly cash takings of £3,000 cost £20.20 a deposit at 65p per £100 plus the 70p credit charge, or about £87 a month, which is more than thirteen times the £6.50 account fee. For a cash-heavy shop, that charge, not the monthly fee, is the cost that decides the account.
Cash withdrawals at LINK machines are free up to the £700 daily limit on the business debit card. International payments are charged separately, and the Card Usage section below sets out what they cost.
Virgin Money Features and Business Banking Tools
Virgin Money’s tools sit between a high-street bank’s and a digital challenger’s: a debit card, online banking and an app with in-app cheque scanning, the free M-Track insights dashboard, and direct feeds to Xero, Sage and QuickBooks.
M-Track sits free inside online banking. Virgin Money describes it as a place to connect other business tools, dig into the numbers and reach its business network. That’s a dashboard, not a ledger: it shows you where the money went and won’t file anything, which is why the Xero, Sage and QuickBooks links above still matter.
What you don’t get is FreeAgent. NatWest includes it free, a tool that costs from £19/month on its own for a sole trader, and Mettle does the same if you make at least one transaction a month. So a business that runs VAT and Making Tax Digital through FreeAgent pays for the software throughout at Virgin Money, and for the account as well once the free months end.
Invoicing and Expense Management
Virgin Money doesn’t bundle a built-in invoicing tool the way Tide or Starling do. Invoicing runs through the accounting software (Xero, Sage or QuickBooks), with Virgin Money providing the bank feed underneath.
That suits a business with an accounting platform and an accountant already in place.
A sole trader who wants to fire off five invoices a month from a phone should look at Tide first: Tide does that inside the same app. With Virgin Money, the invoicing tool is a separate pick.
M-Track inside the Virgin Money app and online banking gives you basic spending and cash-flow overlays, useful for a quick monthly review, not a replacement for proper expense management.
For mileage tracking, receipt capture and proper expense categorisation, you’ll want Xero Expenses or QuickBooks Receipt Capture alongside.
Integrations and Accounting Software
Virgin Money lists Xero, Sage and QuickBooks integrations from both Business Internet Banking and its app, with Xero free for six months, and we re-read that list at uk.virginmoney.com on 5 November 2026. If your accountant already works in one of the three, the feed brings your transactions into their software, so the books are reconciled from the account rather than from last month’s CSV export.
FreeAgent is the gap. Virgin Money doesn’t support a direct FreeAgent feed, and there’s no bundled FreeAgent subscription.
If FreeAgent is your VAT-and-MTD platform, you’ll be on a manual statement import or routing transactions through Open Banking aggregators, not the native feed NatWest and Mettle customers get.
Virgin Money Card Usage and Payments
Day-to-day card usage on the Business Current Account is straightforward. You get a debit card with contactless, chip and PIN and mobile-wallet support, free withdrawals at LINK machines, and 0.35% cashback on eligible spending.
The friction is overseas. Debit-card payments carry a 2.75% fee (minimum £1.50) outside the UK and the European Economic Area, and inside it for any currency other than sterling, the euro, the Swedish krona and the Romanian leu. So a card payment in euros to a supplier in France costs nothing extra, while the same card used to pay in dollars costs at least 2.75% every time.
We re-read these fees and limits in Virgin Money’s tariff guides on 5 November 2026. The exchange rate itself moves with the market, so the rate you are quoted on the day will differ from any figure printed here.
Spending, Transfers and Limits
UK debit-card spending and the transfers you send yourself carry no charge on the Business Current Account. Standing orders and direct debits are free throughout on the M Account, but on the Business Current Account they cost 30p each once the 25 free months end, so the standing order for your rent and the direct debit for your utilities each add 30p a month.
Cashback runs at 0.35% on eligible debit-card purchases for the Business Current Account, capped at £500 a calendar year per card. The M Account for Business earns 0.25%, and Virgin Money states plainly that this one is uncapped. So above £200,000 of annual card spend, the account paying the lower rate pays you more. Cash transactions, tax payments, debt repayments and money transfers are excluded from both.
The business debit Mastercard has a cash limit of £700 a day at LINK machines. For a builder paying £1,200 in cash to subcontractors each Friday, that means starting the withdrawals on Thursday.
An overdraft on the main account is subject to credit assessment, so a business opening with no trading history should not count on one.
Overseas Payments and FX Fees
International transfers convert at Virgin Money’s own exchange rate, and we could not find the margin in that rate in its tariff guides or on its foreign exchange page. Each SWIFT payment costs £25 in branch or by phone (£17.50 through online banking on the M Account). Neither account can hold euros or dollars the way Wise or Airwallex allow. For that, Virgin Money offers a separate Foreign Currency Account, which needs a sterling account with it first and goes through a relationship manager or its phone line.
Wise converts at the mid-market rate and shows its fee before you send. Without a margin to work from, the gap on a euro supplier payment can’t be priced in advance, and it recurs on every transfer.
If your quarterly VAT and monthly payroll run in sterling, FX doesn’t touch you. If you’re paying a German supplier on the 15th of every month and invoicing a US client in dollars, the exchange spread is taken on every one of those payments. A euro payment sent by SEPA carries no fee on the tariff, so the spread is the whole cost, and it is the one figure we could not find.
A business that pays overseas suppliers every month can keep Virgin Money as its main sterling account for the free period and the cashback, and run Wise or Airwallex alongside it for the currency payments.
Virgin Money Customer Reviews and Ratings
Trustpilot sits at 3.0 out of 5 from about 13,400 reviews, read at trustpilot.com on 14 September 2026. Of the banks we set it against, only NatWest scores lower: Santander is on 3.8, Barclays 4.1, Starling 4.3 and Monzo 4.6.
If you are weighing this up on service, a 3.0 is not the high-street ceiling. Barclays, with its own branch network and a full lending suite, scores 4.1, more than a point higher. The one bank Virgin Money clears is NatWest, on 1.4, and that figure comes from an unclaimed profile filed under “Insurance agency” carrying 8,654 reviews, where Starling’s 4.3 rests on 48,172 on a paid profile. The two profiles are not run on the same footing, which is reason enough not to build an argument on the distance between them.
Business Moneyfacts Awards named Virgin Money Best Service from a Business Bank in 2025 and again in 2026. That is an industry-judged award on service metrics rather than a customer-vote average, so it is worth weighing next to the 3.0, not instead of it.
The 13,400-review Trustpilot figure also covers all Virgin Money products (mortgages, personal accounts, savings and credit cards), not business banking in isolation, so it tells you more about the brand than about its business accounts.
On the Nationwide transfer, Virgin Money’s and Nationwide’s own communications say day-to-day banking is unchanged, with the same sort codes, account numbers, app and contact details. We have not measured complaints about the move, so the Trustpilot score above is not evidence about it either way.
Virgin Money Business Account Alternatives
Virgin Money earns its place on 25 months of free banking and on cashback that, from about £22,300 of card spending a year, pays the fee back afterwards. Strip out the free months and what is left is a £6.50 monthly fee plus 30p per standing order, direct debit or incoming payment, which several accounts with no monthly fee beat outright. We compared it on what recurs every month rather than on the joining offer.
Starling is the closest straight swap if you do not need new borrowing. It stays free, charges nothing on UK transfers, is not currently accepting applications for business overdrafts or loans, and sits at 4.3 on Trustpilot against Virgin Money’s 3.0. What you give up is the cashback.
Tide is the better fit when your problem is the admin rather than the banking, because invoicing and expense tracking sit in the same app instead of in a separate accounting subscription. The transfers are where it costs you: five free a month on the free plan, then 20p each way, so paying forty suppliers a month runs to about £7, more than Virgin Money charges once its free period ends.
Barclays is the one to look at if you genuinely need the counter. It offers in-person banking at branches and Barclays Local sites, but the free period stops at 12 months and the fee then goes to £8.50, which is £24 a year more once both offers have run out.
FAQs
Is the Virgin Money business account FSCS-protected?
Yes. Since the 2 April 2026 transfer, accounts are held by Nationwide Building Society (FRN 106078), authorised by the PRA and regulated by the FCA and PRA. Eligible deposits are protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme up to £120,000 per eligible depositor per institution. We re-read the limit on the FSCS website and Virgin Money’s own wording on 5 November 2026. If the same depositor also holds money at Nationwide, which for a sole trader includes personal savings, count the £120,000 across both balances rather than separately, because both sit with one institution.
What changed when Virgin Money transferred to Nationwide?
Day-to-day banking didn’t change. Sort codes, account numbers, the Virgin Money app, online banking login and phone-support lines all continue to work exactly as before. The High Court approved the transfer on 23 February 2026, and it completed on 2 April 2026. Legally, your account is now under Nationwide Building Society. Virgin Money UK plc no longer operates as a separate regulated entity. We confirmed this from Virgin Money’s and Nationwide’s transfer communications in October 2026.
What is the monthly fee after the free period?
£6.50 a month on the Standard Tariff after the 25-month free period for new businesses. We re-read this at uk.virginmoney.com on 5 November 2026. That puts Virgin Money in the middle on ongoing cost: cheaper than Barclays (£8.50) and Santander (£9.99), more than NatWest (no monthly fee, 35p per automated payment) and Starling (free). The 25-month free period beats every other bank in our fee table, though TSB advertises a 30-month offer, so the value lies in the long head start rather than the ongoing rate.
Is there cashback on the Virgin Money business account?
Yes. The Business Current Account pays 0.35% cashback on eligible debit-card purchases, capped at £500 per calendar year per debit card. At £12,000 of annual spend that earns £42, and the cashback covers the £78 yearly fee from about £22,300. The M Account pays an uncapped 0.25%, but on cashback alone it only overtakes once annual card spend exceeds £200,000.
Does Virgin Money include free FreeAgent?
No. Virgin Money supports Xero, Sage and QuickBooks integrations via Open Banking, but doesn’t bundle FreeAgent. NatWest includes FreeAgent free while you keep the account, a tool whose regular price starts at £19/month for a sole trader. If FreeAgent is your VAT-and-MTD platform, NatWest gives you £228 a year of software value on monthly billing, or £190 on annual, that Virgin Money doesn’t match. If your accountant uses Xero or QuickBooks, the gap doesn’t apply.
What is the M Account for Business?
The M Account for Business is Virgin Money’s digital business account with no monthly fee, for sole traders, limited companies, partnerships and LLPs with annual turnover under £1 million. It pays 0.25% cashback on eligible debit-card purchases, and you apply online. Its nearest equivalent is NatWest’s Mettle, which also charges no monthly fee and, unlike the M Account, includes FreeAgent if you make at least one transaction a month. Both are covered by the FSCS up to £120,000: the M Account through Nationwide, and Mettle through National Westminster Bank, according to Mettle’s own site, read on 5 November 2026.
How we reviewed Virgin Money
What we assessed. We assessed Virgin Money’s two business accounts on the monthly fee and free period, transaction and cash charges, cashback, eligibility and accounting integrations, against the banks in our fee table.
Data sources. We re-read Virgin Money’s two product pages and both tariff guides on 5 November 2026, its international tariff on 2 November 2026, and the fees in our table on each bank’s own website on 5 November 2026. The Trustpilot scores were read on 14 September 2026. The transfer to Nationwide rests on Virgin Money’s and Nationwide’s own notices, and we cross-checked regulatory status on the FCA register, both in October 2026. No affiliate material.
Update cadence. We update this page when we find that a provider has changed pricing, eligibility or terms, and a date beside a figure is the date we last read it. We have no affiliate relationship with Virgin Money; see our editorial policy.