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We offer business accounts to directors of limited companies and sole traders. If you're a director of a limited company, your company must be registered with Companies House. If you haven't done this yet, we can register your company for you. We'll handle the process and you'll only have to pay £24.99 of the £50 fee charged by Companies House. We'll cover the rest. If you're a sole trader or freelancer, you must have a valid UK home address and be registered with HMRC. To register with HMRC, you just need to get in touch at gov.uk and follow the site navigation to let HMRC know you're now self-employed. We welcome everyone to apply for a Tide account. Our mission is to empower diverse and often under-represented small and medium business owners who lack access to financial services. We don’t discriminate against anyone on the basis of political beliefs, religion, race, or any other characteristic protected by law. However, we can’t provide services for everyone. When someone wishes to join Tide, we calculate their risk factors. These risk factors include what type of business they have, how their business makes money and which industry it operates in. If this risk is too high for us to support, we won’t accept their application. This is to make sure that we keep Tide members safe, that we have the resources to fully support them and their businesses, and that we do our best to support ethical business practices in line with our regulatory requirements. As a result, we can’t accept anyone whose business is funded fully or in part by regular donations, as these carry specific risks that we are not currently able to service. This is especially true if we or the business owner is unable to trace where these finances are coming from. We are also unfortunately unable to accept businesses in the following industries: The holding, managing and/or controlling of a third party’s (client’s/customer’s) finances in the Tide account. This includes using the money on behalf of other individuals Insurance companies (incl. insurance brokers) Trading of cryptocurrencies The wholesale of precious metals and stones Investments (incl. real estate investments) Money services (such as foreign exchange, loan providers, money transfers) Casinos, prize draws and other betting or gambling activities Sale of unlicensed pharmaceuticals Sale or trade of cannabidiol (CBD) products Trading of weapons, explosives or armaments Unlicensed trading and processing of scrap metal Unlicensed waste management Sale, import and export of used vehicles or heavy machinery Escort services and other services in the adult industry Bidding fee auctions Non-profit organisations, including charities CICs and CIOs We understand that this won’t be good news for some people. But we have to do this so we can fully support the financial strength and safety of our new and existing members. You’re always welcome to get in touch with us at hello@tide.co if you have any questions or comments about this.

On-boarding timeframes vary depending on the types of applications we receive, but more than half of our new members this year opened their bank account in less than 10 minutes. To be exact, 53% opened their accounts in under 10 minutes, 70% in under 60 minutes, and 81% within 48 hours. Even if your business is a bit more complex and we can’t complete your application right away, if you meet our eligibility requirements it’ll still be far quicker than most high street banks! Saving our members time is at the core of what we do, so we’re always working to optimise and improve wait times. You can read about why we sometimes need a little more information on our blog.

No! To open a current account, we perform electronic checks (run by third-party services) to verify your identity and comply with UK anti-money laundering regulations. While these checks will not impact your credit score, they will appear on your credit report.

Yes, Tide has recently joined the Current Account Switch Service. You can find out more about this below.

Yes! it is totally free to connect your existing business current account and start using our products and services. Where an additional fee applies to the use of any Tide Membership features or additional products and services we will specify this to you before you opt-in.

Yes. We’re an authorised formation agent of Companies House, and we’re securely integrated with them, so you can trust us to register your limited company.