Capital On Tap – pros and cons

[Ash]

New 30k sign up offer announced. Short of the high water 100k sign up from few years ago, but still beats the standard 10k.

LLP and ltd companies accepted
Visa?
Free fx rates.
Healthy credit limits??
Can use with curve but curve will move you to curve business card.
Can use with curve to pay HMRC 0.1% fee if fronted, 1.7% if used without curve.
Compatible PayPal friends and family?
Cot fee tax deductible.
No bonuses for supplementary cards
20k Avios for spending 20k in first 3 months.

Welcome corrections, updates and user experiences.

[Rob]

Avios transfer instantly, not overnight like Amex

Spend enough and you get a personal account manager

If you get a low limit you can speak to a real person with real power who can increase it when given a good reason (or will give you a timeline for doing so once they’ve seen you clear your initial bills)

Whilst I’m sure some people have had issues, all the people I know personally who use it (one is doing £1m per year on it) are very happy.

[Capital on Tap]

Hi Ash,

When it comes to our promotions with HFP, we regularly review this, but you are correct the offers have altered over the years.

With regards to the above :
LLP and ltd companies are accepted

We currently have an agreement with Visa, so it would be a VISA card.

We do offer free FX.

Our credit limits vary, but there is currently a maximum of £250,000 (we do regularly review this also)

You can use with curve to pay HMRC 0.1% fee if fronted and it would be 1.7% if used without curve.

With PayPal, you can link the card for transactions only. However, we don’t accept payments from a PayPal account nor can we send your funding to a PayPal account.

There aren’t currently any bonuses for adding supplementary cards.

With the latest HFP offer, you would receive 10,000 points for your first transactions and a further 20,000 points for spending £20,000 in first 3 months.

[No Longer Entitled]

Worth noting that with the current offer you would earn an additional 20,000 avios on the £20,000 spend so if you were to hit the target in 3mths you would see a 50,000 balance (10,000 welcome + 20,000 bonus + 20,000 spend).

I’ve used the card for about 18mths and really like it. It has a good interface and the customer service is very good. Contrary to Rob’s assertion, I don’t know anyone who has had their credit limit revised upon acceptance but true to their word, it is reviewed after several months.

My only gripe is the lack of integration with Sage but it’s not enough to deter my use.

[Ash]

Thank you all.

Capital on Tap – We have a simple partnership (not LLP), with its own HMRC UTR, is it eligible?
Please could you expand on the paypal part…”nor can we send your funding to a PayPal account.”…I assume this means we can pay on merchants websites that offer PayPal at checkout but we can’t pay a merchants invoices if they request it via PayPal link? Nor is it possible to send payment via Paypal’s Friends and family or Goods and services feature?

[The Savage Squirrel]

Ash wrote:

Thank you all.

Capital on Tap – We have a simple partnership (not LLP), with its own HMRC UTR, is it eligible?
Please could you expand on the paypal part…”nor can we send your funding to a PayPal account.”…I assume this means we can pay on merchants websites that offer PayPal at checkout but we can’t pay a merchants invoices if they request it via PayPal link? Nor is it possible to send payment via Paypal’s Friends and family or Goods and services feature?

Sadly not: COT booted out all sole traders and partnerships around a year ago, me included, which – as a reliable longstanding customer who liked the product and service – was disappointing. No Sage but their Xero integration was good.

[Nate1309]

I have been using COT for 2 year and been really pleased with the product in general. We use Xero and integration with that is good. The earning rate for a non Amex is excellent. The options for non-avios redeemers are good too.

One annoyance is that I have a certain vendor who I purchase from all the time and it always requests a code which is a pain when someone else in the company is putting the order through. It would be good to have a safe list like Amex.

I recently started a new company and tried to join COT via that and was requested to send a lot of documents which I did. There was meant to be a response in 2 business days. 11 days later I rang seeing what was going on and it was filed incorrectly. 15 minutes after that I was denied an account for the second company. They can’t have even looked at all the documents in that time so I was a bit disappointed in the customer service.

[Ash]

Thank you for the feedback. Have any of you made payments via PayPal with the CoT. We have one supplier who accepts via PayPal but can find defintive data as to whether CoT works with PayPal or not. And if yes, the charges.

[kt74]

Hi, yes, if it’s any help I’ve used it to fund Paypal transactions to both standard business purchases and “pay a friend” (e.g. when I pay a handyman / plumber) with no additional charges. I think you’re just not meant to use it to fund a balance on Paypal – presumably because you could just transfer that amount out to your bank account

[FlusterCuck]

Using a personal Curve Metal with business CoT to pay HMRC personal tax bills:
I couldn’t understand why the amounts charged to my CoT the last few times were more than what I had typed in the box on the gov.uk site.
I contacted Curve today and received the below response:

“I have had a look into these transactions for you and confirm that Curve has not charged any fees for these transactions, as such this would indicate that this has been a Cash Advance Fee from your underlying payment card.

We pass on the Merchant Category Code (MCC) for every transaction you make through us to your issuer. So they have oversight on what kinds of transactions you’re making using your Curve card.

Your card issuer will decide whether or not to apply charges on this transaction, dependent on your T&Cs with them.

If you’d like us to manually move this to another card (manual Go Back in Time), we’d be more than happy to do so. Please reply with the last 4 digits of the card you would like me to move this to.

If you have any other questions or queries please let us know, I hope you have a lovely rest of your day!”

I queried that I didn’t think this was a cash advance fee and received the response below:

“Thanks for getting back to me, I have looked into this further and can see that this fee was in relation making these transactions via a commercial card (business card), apologies for any confusion in regards to this.

Traditionally Curve has been covering the cost of transactions made using an underlying business card on personal accounts, however this is no longer sustainable for us to continue this as our business grows.

We’ve previously restricted our free customers from adding and using their business cards on our free standard tier, however we want to continue to allow these types of transactions with your Curve card, rather than simply blocking them.
​
This means we’ll now be charging a 1.5% fee on every transaction made using a business payment card on personal Curve accounts on all subscription tiers. This fee helps us to cover the costs of using these cards.

As such you fee free limit for making transactions via your business card is 1500 GBP per calendar month.

Once you’ve exceeded this limit, you’ll be charged the 1.5% fee. You can read more about this here​.

Apologies again for any confusion and I hope this clarifies the fees in regards to these transactions.

[The Savage Squirrel]

So to get this straight:
You’re paying your PERSONAL tax bill out of a Ltd Co’s BUSINESS account but using a PERSONAL debit card to do this but with a BUSINESS credit card underlying that transaction.

I’m not surprised this ran into issues somewhere. Seems a good way to annoy HMRC, COT, Curve and your accountant all in one go 😀

[Ash]

Isn’t the new policy that they migrate you to a Curve Business card if you use the Curve personal card with an underlying business card?

[Jonathans]

Ash wrote:

Isn’t the new policy that they migrate you to a Curve Business card if you use the Curve personal card with an underlying business card?

Not automatically, i’ve never been contacted by Curve (apart from the generic t&c’s are changing email) and still have my personal metal account with them. I do use my Curve card for both business and personal transactions though and have a mix of underlying card types. They charge both 1.5% for fronted over £10k and 1.5% over the £1.5k for using a commercial funding card. Switching to a business Curve card still means i am paying 1.6% overall so i’ve decided to just pay my PAYE with CoT via Curve upto £1500 and everything else HMRC related will be paid directly with CoT and pay 1.7% for the ease and convenience.

[John_V85]

I’ve just come up against the recent Curve 1.5% business card fronted fee above £1,500, which stacks on the 1.5% over £10k.

What’s the fee for paying CoT direct with HMRC, which I presume is the same as the fee if one converts Curve to their business card.

Possibly time to say goodbye to the Curve/CoT combination.

[rams]

Curve/CoT still works ok when you switch to business card though you get the 10k limit you pay 0.1% fee to make the payment.

So for example you get to spend £9990 with HMRC instead of £10000

[John_V85]

rams wrote:

Curve/CoT still works ok when you switch to business card though you get the 10k limit you pay 0.1% fee to make the payment.

So for example you get to spend £9990 with HMRC instead of £10000

Is that really correct? Initially, we had a business curve card and HMRC saw it as such and would charge the business card (~1.7%) fee if used.

Where does the 0.1% come from?

[VinZ]

Do you know how long it takes for the second bonus (20k points) to hit the account after you’ve hit the spend threshold? Thanks