Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

The new Avios SME payment card from Capital On Tap works at HMRC

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EDIT:  This article is now out of date.  Capital On Tap has relaunched with just one Avios card, Business Rewards, which is better than both of the cards described below.  Click here to read our review of Capital On Tap Business Rewards.  We still have a higher sign-up bonus for our readers.

Capital On Tap’s Capital Club card is a new payment card for small businesses which offers Avios on your spending.

We covered it in detail here but in summary:

you get 10,000 Capital On Tap points (converts to 5,000 Avios) for signing up and spending £5,000 within 3 months – and HFP readers get a special higher bonus

you get 1 Capital On Tap point for every £1 you spend (converts to 0.5 Avios)

no foreign exchange fees when spending overseas

no ATM fees if withdrawing cash on the card

up to 56 days interest free credit on purchases (minimum monthly repayment is the greater of 10% of balance or £250)

up to 15 free supplementary cards for your staff

The card has an annual fee of £99.  This is obviously tax deductible as a business expense.  The maximum credit limit on offer is £50,000.

I have now heard from two HfP readers who have successfully used the card to pay HMRC.  It appears to go through as a personal debit card and is therefore accepted without any fees.  This would allow our self-employed readers to pay their VAT, PAYE, corporation tax and personal tax via Capital On Tap whilst earning 0.5 Avios per £1 spent.

You can learn more about the card in our main article here, which I have updated to include this HMRC information.  The application page is here.

If you use promo code headforpoints when signing up, you will receive an additional 500 Capital On Tap points.  This is worth an additional 250 Avios.


Want to earn more points from credit cards? – April 2024 update

If you are looking to apply for a new credit card, here are our top recommendations based on the current sign-up bonuses.

In February 2022, Barclaycard launched two exciting new Barclaycard Avios Mastercard cards with a bonus of up to 25,000 Avios. You can apply here.

You qualify for the bonus on these cards even if you have a British Airways American Express card:

Barclaycard Avios Plus card

Barclaycard Avios Plus Mastercard

Get 25,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £10,000 Read our full review

Barclaycard Avios card

Barclaycard Avios Mastercard

5,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £20,000 Read our full review

You can see our full directory of all UK cards which earn airline or hotel points here. Here are the best of the other deals currently available.

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

25,000 Avios and the famous annual 2-4-1 voucher Read our full review

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

40,000 bonus points and a huge range of valuable benefits – for a fee Read our full review

Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard

15,000 bonus points and 1.5 points for every £1 you spend Read our full review

Earning miles and points from small business cards

If you are a sole trader or run a small company, you may also want to check out these offers:

British Airways Accelerating Business American Express

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

American Express Business Platinum

40,000 points sign-up bonus and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Business Gold

20,000 points sign-up bonus and FREE for a year Read our full review

Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa

Huge 30,000 points bonus until 12th May 2024 Read our full review

For a non-American Express option, we also recommend the Barclaycard Select Cashback card for sole traders and small businesses. It is FREE and you receive 1% cashback on your spending.

Barclaycard Select Cashback Business Credit Card

1% cashback uncapped* on all your business spending (T&C apply) Read our full review

Comments (99)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • John Pagani says:

    The capital on tap card is obviously much better Avios earner than the Tesco current account debit card but…. I’ve been charged £199 for my point earning card this morning? Also, the limit placed on the account is too small for many of my HMRC payments. Is it possible to pre-load the card so if can be used for my HMRC payments?

    • Mr(s) Entitled says:

      Can you make smaller but more frequent HMRC payments and pay these down immediately as an alternative to preloading?

    • Mr Dee says:

      If the credit limits are low not really much good for businesses

  • Paul says:

    LATAM flights can be booked via Skyscanner for £1180pp. 2-3-2 on 777 though so not the best seat

    • Richard says:

      Looked at Skyscanner and LHR-SCL is £1,153 on Air France in business in September 2019.

    • Simon says:

      I travelled from Sao Paulo to Santiago on a LATAM 787 last week and the seat wasn’t as comfortable as I thought it would be and not very supportive. Also, climbing over the passenger next to you, if they’re reclined, is awkward. I was surprised how tatty the seat was looking with various bits of trim coming away. Although, the service, food and drink was good.

      Saying that, I flew back from Santiago on a BA 787 in First and the leather trim on the console had completely worn through, which was surprising.

      LATAM is often quite good value, certainly better than the £9200 my ticket cost from London to Rio on BA in Business and return from Santiago (LATAM Rio to Sao Paulo and Sao Paulo to Santiago)!

  • Lee says:

    Uh oh!

  • Concerto says:

    I looked at a LH Early Bird special from FRA to SIN for 3 of us, wow, only 30,000 miles RT, what a deal! But the jolly taxes are €498 and a paid ticket would be €715 on my dates. So, I take my business elsewhere once again and buy an AFKL ticket to further my Plat requalification, and use the said M&M miles for hopping around Asia for great value with almost no taxes.

  • Helen says:

    Rob, in the commentary above re the Capital on Tap card, it goes through as a personal Debit Card when linked to Curve, right? Or are you saying it goes through as a personal debit card on its own and doesn’t need linking to curve? I used it twice successfully, but both times linked to Curve. I don’t see Curve mentioned in your commentary above. Might want to clarify that to make it clearer?

    • Rob says:

      You can’t link it to Curve because it is a prepaid debit card, technically.

      • Memesweeper says:

        I’ve linked to Curve without issue. Drinking a tea that I’ve just for using Curve + CapitalOnTap! Great news about HMRC payments working directly though, I was worried about what might happen if Curve go under.

        • Memesweeper says:

          Drinking a tea I’ve just PAID for that should read…

          (Rob: editable comments please! Disqus maybe?)

          • Rob says:

            Disqus is rubbish and most people who try it drop it quickly.

        • Alex Sm says:

          Even if not Disqus, than another way to edit comments (and get notifications of later replies to your comments) – these are two necessary features which seem to be in high demand here. Rob – please consider rolling them out at next update. Thanks!

          • Rob says:

            You cannot let comments be edited. It’s like Twitter. It would lead to manipulation.

        • Alex D says:

          Notifications on post comments would be a great feature!

        • Shoestring says:

          or just increasing ‘Recent comments’ from 6 to 10 latest posts

        • the_real_a says:

          A good practice is to allow comments to be edited for 5 minutes that should mitigate the risk of manipulation, that would allow enough margin to correct typo`s etc which i think people are asking for.

        • Mr Dee says:

          Some sort of commenting accounts feature would be good as currently its difficult to keep up never mind find old/replied to comments past today

        • Mr Dee says:

          No point wasting Curve limit unless you will never come close to it.

        • Alex Sm says:

          Twitter is losing out competition because of that! Facebook introduced editing of comments long time ago, as well as all major messengers and blogging platforms. If you are afraid of “manipulation” (though it’s difficult to see where it could be!), editing could be time-limited, just for people to realise that they made a typo or posted something twice and correct it!

          Notifications would help IMMENSELY to keep track of replies to one’s comments or questions in previous posts

      • Helen says:

        I’m using it with curve with no issues

        • Helen says:

          In fact I used it dIrectly with HMRC once but I chose Business Mastercard that time and it charged me a fee. Are you saying if I had chosen Personal mastercard it would have still gone through without any fee? In any case Curve have upped my limits and I’m using it regularly to pay HMRC via Curve with no problems at all.

  • Lee says:

    Just done the Capital Partners app, approved for £6k so that’s probably standard, however as someone earlier mentioned, the option is free or £199. That’s completely different to what the opening page on their website says, where it clearly states £99. That smells dodgy to me as it doesn’t give the option for £99 card. The quickest way to put me off is to play silly buggers, I’m not sure they are even allowed to do this given they are supposedly FCA regulated

  • Ammar says:

    OT – How do you link the Raddison Reward a/c to Amex for MR points transfer – do you have to put something infront of the a/c number I recall?

    • Tim says:

      I was only able to do it by calling Amex.

    • the_real_a says:

      You have to add leading zero`s but agree with Tim, call them up the agents are used to the workaround (but hang up if routed to manilla)

    • Andrew says:

      I can’t remember which numbers you miss off but I think the help box or the full information on right hand side of the screen tell you which numbers to pop into the website. Of course, I only spotted this after the helpful chap in Brighton told me what to do!

    • 1nfrequent says:

      I ended up calling Amex as I had the same problem and they guy who did it for me said he needed to knock off the first 6 numbers.

      1F

  • Munch says:

    OT Looking to status match IHG Spire Elite to Hilton Platinum. There seems to be a mixed approach from Hilton looking at Statusmatcher feedback. Some people seem to receive Platinum immediately, others are given a challenge. I’m currently gold not sure if this makes a difference? Anyone have any
    experience? If I’m given a challenge do point stays count?

    • Rob says:

      You get both. 90 day match with a challenge to keep it.

      • Munch says:

        Do points stays count towards the challenge?

        • Paul says:

          Hope so, I’m on a 10 stay Diamond challenge now and have used point & cash rather than full points for 2 stays so far (9 completed by next week for end of March deadline) as should meet the paid stays criteria in the original HH status challenge email.

        • Munch says:

          Paul – do you get one year at the new status from the the last date of your 10th stay? Or is it from the start of your challenge?

        • Paul says:

          Challenge started 2/1/19 and Diamond will run to 31/3/20 when I am successful as per original email.

        • Genghis says:

          Yes

      • Paul says:

        I am Gold Rob and was told during present challenge from Gold to Diamond that Diamond benefits only granted at the end of the challenge and not during the 90 days period.

        • Munch says:

          Rob – if I’m matching from IHG could my challenge be less than Paul’s 10 nights?

        • Qwerty Bertie says:

          When I took the challenge I was told the same bit I said that was not good enough as I had an expensive resort stay coming up during the challenge period. They reacted well and made me diamond straight away (but still on the challenge of course).

        • Graham Walsh says:

          Rubbish, as soon as I applied I was upgraded to Diamond (email confirmation – keep it too as had an argument with them in Dubai) and had Diamond status for the 8 stays I had to do

          For the next 90 days, get a taste of the elite life with Hilton Honors and enjoy the highest earning potential out there.

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