can anybody recommend a bank for a very small business

[Vulgar]

I've been running my own very tiny business for 3 year but I just use my own personal account (I know I'm crap). but my turnover is tiny -less than £2,000 per year and no profit yet . . .

However, in a couple of months I am doing a large show which I will probably have to hire a Card terminal thingy as takings will hopefully be much larger. I'm guessing I will have to have a business account.

or do paypal virtual terminal through a laptop?

They charge you for internet access unfortunately.

We use bank of scotland for all our business banking and merchant services. We do use mals-e for online payments. If you will have access to a computer I would recommend them.

Thank you HighHeidYin, I will check them out.

Sorry x post. Have you weighed up the costs of using internet against hiring a card machine? I am not sure what the rules are surrounding hiring a card machine temporarily but I seem to remember there was a lot of red tape involved when we brought ours in.

Vulgar - get a dongle and bypass their internet.

What is a dongle?

(told you I was crap!)

RBS do free business banking , if you go to their website it's called business banking direct , but not sure about the card machine.

Thank you highriggs - that sounds interesting.

Dongle : www.broadbandgenie.co.uk/mobilebroadband/pay-as-you-go

Santander small business account is free - and excellent so long as you never need to call customer service!

wow1 so much interesting stuff. My head is swimming a bit now but many thanks everyone!

Hope it goes well. Will you come back and let us know how it goes?

Yes will do!

hi i just started out and am using santander as they seem to tick all the boxes.
Hope all goes well at your show.

Thanks
Vicky
www.wishesandsparkle.co.uk
[email protected]

I had no end of hassle with Santander - after nine months they still couldn't supply me with a PIN and business debit card that worked. I notice that in the financial problems pages of the Saturday Telegraph and Sunday Times they still feature heavily. Their customer service is awful.

I now bank with HSBC for all my companies and don't pay bank charges at all. They are very helpful.