How Capital on Tap and ClearBank launched embedded SME savings accounts in under 6 months
- An embedded savings account purpose built for SMEs, combining market leading interest rates, instant access, no fees, and no deposit restrictions.
- Rapid time to market, delivering a new savings account from initial idea to launch in under six months.
- Leveraging ClearBank’s banking licence through its Embedded Banking proposition means Capital on Tap’s Instant Savings account are FSCS eligible, providing SMEs with confidence to save on the platform.
- Significant customer uptake with savings deposits reaching almost £500m in the first few months of availability.
“When we started thinking about offering a savings product, we researched what else was out there. Frankly, a lot of the incumbents were offering uncompetitive rates to their small business customers. And so, we saw an opportunity to give the market a more compelling offering.”
Alex Miles and the team at Capital on Tap are on a mission to provide SMEs with financial services tailored to their specific needs. The firm is focused on making the lives of small business owners easier by providing fast, flexible, and accessible financial solutions that help them manage spending, access credit, and streamline operations.
While its core product is a business credit card, the firm recognised that many customers were dissatisfied with traditional banking products, including savings accounts. These were often the same accounts as the retail customers, with little consideration for how a business might want to use them.
Seeing a gap in the market, Capital on Tap has set out to change that, as Alex Miles explains:
“We asked our customers how else we could help them with their financial lives and how to make their lives easier and they came back and said savings. We thought about the different approaches for launching an account and quickly decided we didn't want to go down the route of getting a banking licence. So that meant finding the right partner to support us on that journey.”
Delivering a strategically important product required a banking partner that aligned with Capital on Tap’s vision and technical demands and offered a delivery track record that would enable it to not just compete with existing offerings but surpass them.
“On the surface, it might sound quite simple that we wanted to offer a savings account. However, there's lots of complexity behind it. So, we wanted a partner with a proven track record and reputation and whose technology was flexible and easy to integrate.”
Those criteria led the firm to ClearBank and its Embedded Banking proposition that offers access to UK banking infrastructure in the form of embedded accounts and payment scheme access without facing the process and costs of becoming a bank themselves. ClearBank also oversees the KYC and customer due diligence process and sets the minimum standards it expects of clients, while the customer-facing aspects are managed by Capital on Tap, enabling it to own the user experience.
By partnering with ClearBank, Capital on Tap ensured its savings accounts were built on secure, scalable, and highly resilient infrastructure. Crucially, the partnership enables the company to deliver features such as instant deposits through the Faster Payment System (FPS) and eligible deposits are FSCS protected up to £85,000.
“We wanted the product to already be holistic rather than baked into a road map. What ClearBank provided from the off was a way to launch, iterate and then scale the savings accounts. They also have an openness and collaborative mindset so that we can develop the roadmap together,”
Good ideas are nothing without meaningful execution. Capital on Tap and ClearBank launched the Capital on Tap Instant Savings account from the initial idea to a live product in under six months, demonstrating their agility in bringing financial products to market at speed and scale.
Capital on Tap used a phased approach to ensure a smooth rollout, initially offering a waitlist and limited access to business credit card customers. This enabled the company to gather and implement user feedback, providing a polished product and fostering anticipation and loyalty among its existing customers.
“That first phase only took a couple of weeks and gave us confidence to roll it out to our existing customer base. We have hundreds of thousands of customers, so we're able to get traction with the account very quickly. Then, once we got comfortable with the savings product working at some serious scale with them, we moved on to phase three, which was opening it to new customers.”
Traditional savings accounts can require businesses to lock funds away for months to access competitive interest rates, restricting cash flow. The ClearBank and Capital on Tap partnership eliminates that barrier, allowing SMEs to earn interest without sacrificing the flexibility of how and when they access their money.
"Small businesses have traditionally had to choose between easy access to their money and earning competitive returns. Through our partnership with ClearBank, we've created a secure, instant-access savings solution that eliminates this compromise,” Miles says. “This successful collaboration demonstrates our commitment to working with best-in-class partners to combine spending, saving and rewards in one seamless platform."
Funds can be deposited and withdrawn anytime, empowering SMEs with liquidity and financial stability and enabling businesses to earn without limitations. Unlike traditional savings products, this account is seamlessly embedded within the Capital on Tap platform, allowing businesses to manage credit and savings in one place.
"Our savings proposition, powered by ClearBank, represents a fundamental shift in how small businesses can manage their finances,” says Miles. “By combining high-interest savings with our existing credit solutions, we're creating a comprehensive financial ecosystem that directly addresses the market gap for integrated business banking services."
The Instant Savings account sets itself apart through a combination of features that directly address small businesses' unique needs and pain points. That, in turn, has led to significant customer uptake.
From its launch in October 2024 to January 2025, the Capital on Tap Instant Savings account saw thousands of customers onboarded and over £100m in deposits. This was an impressive achievement despite initial availability only to a waitlisted group of customers.
This strong early adoption continued, highlighting the unmet demand for flexible, high-interest SME savings and customers' trust in Capital on Tap and ClearBank. As of June 2025, tens of thousands of existing customers have opened a savings account, attracting around £500m in deposits.
“Customer feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. The main thing that the customers like is the account’s ease of use, market-leading interest rate, and seamless integration into their financial management processes,” Miles says. “They really appreciate the instant access, so as soon as they want to withdraw funds, the money is instantly back in their account. That sounds so simple, yet so many SME products fail to offer what everyday consumers have come to rely on.”
“Building a financial cushion is really important—not just for us but for our employees too. I’d just opened a savings account with another bank when Capital on Tap launched theirs, and the timing couldn’t have been better: the [Capital on Tap Instant Savings account] interest rate was higher, and the whole experience was seamless—it was a no-brainer to switch over. Knowing our savings are working in the background without restrictions or fees has been a game-changer for us.”
As the Instant Savings accounts grow, Capital on Tap is looking to the future with confidence and expanding its relationship with ClearBank.
