01 · The stack
Every provider is three stages deep.
The app you see is stage one. Under it sit the licence and the protection, and those two decide what happens to your money.
Three stages down and back up again. Scroll to see a business account taken apart, then run the same check on yours.
The app you see is stage one. Under it sit the licence and the protection, and those two decide what happens to your money.
What the provider claims and what the register says are different documents. This index reads both and prints the date it read them.
It is rewritten every sprint. Judge it on how outages end and how the API behaves under retry, never on how the balance screen looks.
Qonto runs as a payment institution under ACPR licence 16958, issued on 21 June 2018. Client money sits at partner banks, not at Qonto.
Wise states plainly that its e-money is not covered by the FSCS. bunq holds a Dutch banking licence, so verified accounts sit under the Dutch scheme up to 100,000 euro.
Which legal entity holds the money, under which licence, and who pays you back when that entity fails.
Entity, licence, protection, interface. The same order in every profile, so two providers can be read side by side without translating.
Each stage below comes with the register to open and the exact field to look at. Teaching that check is what this index is for.
The stack in the scene above is how this index reads every provider. Each stage has its own question, its own register and its own way of going wrong. Read them in this order and a business account stops being a matter of taste.
The app, the dashboard, the API. The layer you actually touch and the one that carries no legal weight.
Question: how does it behave on a bad day? Stage 2Bank, electronic money institution or payment institution. Three different sets of obligations behind similar looking apps.
Question: whose licence is it, and what is its number? Stage 3Deposit guarantee, safeguarding, or money segregated at a partner bank. Three promises that pay out very differently.
Question: who pays you back, and up to how much?At stage three a provider does one of three things with your balance. A bank holds it and a deposit guarantee scheme stands behind it. An e-money firm safeguards it, which protects the money in insolvency but pays out no compensation. A payment institution can place it at partner banks, where the guarantee follows the partner and not the provider you signed with.
The UK number moved on 1 December 2025, and firms had until 31 May 2026 to update their own disclosure materials, which is why the old figure still sits in so many comparison tables.
Raised from 85,000 to 120,000 pounds by the Prudential Regulation Authority in policy statement PS24/25, published 18 November 2025. The temporary high balance limit went from 1 million to 1.4 million pounds on the same date. Business deposits count as a single depositor, so a company does not get a separate allowance per account.
Source: Bank of England, PS24/25 · checked 1 Sep 2026
Every profile answers the same four questions in the same order, so two of them can be read side by side without translating.
| Provider | Entity | Licence | Protection |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wise Business | Wise Payments Limited | E-money | Safeguarded |
| Revolut Business UK | Revolut Bank UK Ltd | Bank | FSCS on eligible deposits |
| Revolut Business EU | Revolut Bank UAB | Bank | Lithuanian deposit insurance |
| Monzo Business | Monzo Bank Limited | Bank | FSCS on eligible deposits |
| Starling Business | Starling Bank Limited | Bank | FSCS |
| N26 Business | N26 Bank AG | Bank | German banks compensation scheme |
| Qonto | QONTO SA, formerly Olinda SAS | Payment institution | Client funds segregated at partner banks. Qonto itself is not a bank and holds no deposit guarantee. |
| bunq | bunq B.V. | Bank | Dutch deposit guarantee scheme |
The whole index, with filters and the register beside every row.
Open the index