£20,000 cash deposit limit from ‌1 July 2024?

[Tech_Boss]

Just had this email from Barclays:

As you use your account to pay in cash, we wanted to let you know fr‌om ‌1 July 2024, we’re introducing a maximum £20,000 cash limit you can pay into your personal accounts each year. This will restart each January.

If you have more than one personal account with us, this means the total amount of cash you can pay in across all of them is £20,000, including any children’s savings accounts.

This doesn’t include cash you’ll pay into any business current account you might have.

If you run a business but don’t have a separate account for it and need a higher cash deposit limit, search ‘Barclays business banking’ to find out more about our business accounts. It’s important to keep your business and personal accounts separate.

Why we’re doing this

The National Crime Agency estimates that over £35 billion has been laundered in the UK. Introducing our cash deposit limit will help us fight financial crime.

I’m a IT Support sole trader and take card payments / cash. Most of my customers are of the older generation and tend to prefer cash. I don’t know what to do.

I called my Barclays premier banking team this morning to have a go at them. It didn’t achieve much, but I had to let my feelings be known.

Anyone else received something similar from their bank?

 

[Tech_Boss]

There is your issue - if you are running a business through a personal bank account then you can expect to have any restrictions which are applied to personal accounts. Just open a business account and pay into that...?

Money laundering is a massive issue, so I personally would support the changes.

Well I did run a limited company with a business account for 7 years (until June last year). But my business partner was diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus, so had to go sole trader. It was Barclays who told me just to use my personal account at the time

 

[Tech_Boss]

I’m not doing anything illegal or dodgy. I give my customers an invoice and deposit the cash. Then submit a tax return every year.

Card / bank transfer may be common place in London / other big cities. But in rural parts of Norfolk (especially coastal areas) people haven’t even seen a card machine let alone use one.

 

[Tech_Boss]

Most Banks offer no charges for new businesses. Just open up a business account it really isn't that hard. We recently opened a Mettle account online in 10 mins just to get some free software (Coz I'm tight)

Guess I don’t have much choice. Thanks for the advice.

 

[Tech_Boss]

Depends on your business and the facilities available to you, you may not have internet access or a reliable connection for taking card payments. Plenty of rural locations without phone signal or broadband services still.

Yeah in some areas it’s a struggle to make a phone call on gprs / edge. My card reader needs at least a 3G connection.