By: Money Navigator Research Team
Last Reviewed: 02/02/2026
FACT CHECKED
Quick Summary
Tide’s “free transfer allowance” is a monthly quota of bank transfers that can be made without paying the standard per-transfer fee.
Whether a transaction counts depends on what rail it uses (for example Faster Payments, Direct Debit, or Bacs), and some charges sit outside the allowance entirely (for example card transactions and many non-transfer fees).
This article is educational and not financial advice.
What Tide means by “free transfer allowance”
On Tide, “transfers” are best understood as movements of money between bank accounts (inbound or outbound). Tide publishes plan-level limits for “Transfers to/from other bank accounts” on its plans and pricing page, which is the clearest “headline” definition of the allowance.
Separately, Tide’s help centre describes (for the Smart plan) the allowance as covering “inbound and outbound transfers” and lists the sterling payment types involved in that allowance (Tide Smart free transfer allowance).
The key idea: the allowance is counted in “transfer events”
A practical way to read the allowance is: each completed inbound or outbound transfer event can consume 1 unit of the monthly allowance. So:
One supplier payment = typically 1 transfer event
One Direct Debit collection from your account = typically 1 transfer event
A standing order that runs weekly = 1 transfer event each time it runs
That “counting per event” point matters because it’s easy to confuse “number of recipients” with “number of transfers”.
What counts toward the allowance
1) Faster Payments (typical day-to-day bank transfers)
Faster Payments are the common “bank transfer” rail used by UK banks and fintechs for online/mobile payments. Pay.UK describes the Faster Payment System as available 24/7/365 for real-time payments (Faster Payment System).
In Tide’s help centre, Scheduled Payments/Standing Orders are treated as transfers and charged as Faster Payments; where your plan includes a monthly free transfer allowance, those scheduled payments sit within it (Add payees and set up payments).
2) Direct Debits (money taken from your account under an instruction)
Tide’s Smart-plan allowance page lists Direct Debit among the sterling payment types tied to “inbound and outbound transfers” (Tide Smart free transfer allowance). In practice, the important operational point is that Direct Debits are account-to-account movements rather than card transactions, so they are generally treated as transfers in Tide’s own allowance framing.
3) Bacs receipts (where Tide treats the receipt as a “transfer”)
Bacs is another UK account-to-account rail. Pay.UK describes Bacs as an electronic transfer service, typically Direct Debit and Direct Credit (Bacs Payment System). Tide’s Smart-plan allowance page explicitly lists Bacs among the sterling payment types you can receive under the “free transfer allowance” article (Tide Smart free transfer allowance).
4) Scheduled Payments and Standing Orders (each run counts)
Tide is explicit that there is no fee to set up a Scheduled Payment or Standing Order, but the payment itself counts as a transfer. The same page states that if your plan includes a monthly free transfer allowance, Scheduled Payments are included in it (Add payees and set up payments).
What doesn’t count (or is usually priced outside the allowance)
Card transactions are not “transfers”
Card purchases use card rails, not bank-transfer rails. Tide’s pricing table separates card transactions from transfers (plans and pricing). As a result, a busy card-spend month does not “use up” the transfer allowance in the way repeated bank transfers can.
Many non-transfer fees sit in their own buckets
Even if something moves money, it may be priced separately from “transfers to/from other bank accounts”. Tide’s published pricing separates out items such as cash deposits, ATM withdrawals, and CHAPS fees (plans and pricing). The practical takeaway is that “free transfers” does not mean “no fees anywhere”; it’s a specific allowance for specific rails.
Internal movement to Tide Instant Saver is treated differently
Tide’s Smart-plan allowance page states that transfers between your main Tide account and Tide Instant Saver are always free (Tide Smart free transfer allowance). This is a good example of an “internal transfer” being excluded from the allowance logic entirely.
When the free transfer allowance resets
Tide consistently describes the benefit as monthly (for example, “monthly free transfer allowance” in the Scheduled Payments article) (Add payees and set up payments).
For paid plans, Tide also describes its billing cycle as running from the 1st to the last day of each month, with payments collected on the 1st (When will I be billed my membership fees?). Put together, that’s why the allowance is best understood as a monthly counter that refreshes with the monthly cycle rather than a “rolling 30 days” concept.
If you want the billing mechanics in plain English (VAT, invoices, and billing dates), we break that out separately in Tide membership billing monthly fees, VAT, billing dates, invoices.
Summary Table
| Scenario | Outcome | Practical impact |
|---|---|---|
| You make a UK supplier payment by bank transfer | Typically counts as 1 transfer event | Uses up part of the monthly allowance; once exceeded, per-transfer fees can apply (per plan pricing) |
| You receive a UK bank transfer (e.g., Faster Payments) | Can count as an inbound transfer | High volume of small receipts can consume allowance faster than expected |
| A standing order runs weekly | Each run counts as a transfer | Four weekly runs in a month are four transfer events, not “one standing order” |
| You set up a standing order (setup action) | Setup itself has no fee | The “cost” is tied to each transfer run, not the setup step |
| You move money to/from Tide Instant Saver | Always free (per Tide) | Doesn’t consume your allowance; treated as internal movement |
| You spend using your Tide card | Not a bank transfer | Doesn’t consume transfer allowance; priced/treated under card rules instead |
Scenario Table
| Scenario-level | Process-level | Outcome-level |
|---|---|---|
| “Transfer” in Tide plan tables | Classified as account-to-account movement to/from other bank accounts | Counted against monthly free transfer allowance (plan-dependent) |
| Scheduled Payment / Standing Order | Setup is free; each execution is processed as a transfer (Faster Payment) | Each execution consumes allowance; charged at the standard transfer rate once allowance is exceeded |
| Receiving money via Bacs | Bacs Direct Credit is an account-to-account rail operated within Pay.UK infrastructure | Treated as a receivable transfer type in Tide’s allowance framing (plan-specific help article) |
| Card purchase in GBP | Processed via card networks rather than bank transfer rails | Does not consume monthly transfer allowance |
| Monthly reset | Allowance described as monthly; paid plans use a calendar-month billing cycle | Transfer counter refreshes on the monthly cycle, aligning with how Tide bills paid plans |
Tide Business Bank Account
Tide’s pricing separates “Transfers to/from other bank accounts” from other charge types (card, cash deposits, CHAPS, etc.), which is why the free transfer allowance only answers part of the “what will this cost?” question.
If you want a single place to compare the Tide plans in the wider UK business-account context, see our Tide business account overview.
Frequently Asked Questions
On Tide’s Smart-plan allowance page, the allowance is described as covering “inbound and outbound transfers”, which signals that receiving money can be counted, not just sending it (Tide Smart free transfer allowance).
Operationally, that matters most for businesses that receive many small payments (for example, regular client top-ups). Even if individual receipts are small, the count of receipts can be high, which is what consumes a transfer-based allowance.
Faster Payments are a core UK rail for account-to-account transfers; Pay.UK describes it as a real-time payment system available 24/7/365 (Faster Payment System).
Within Tide’s help content, outgoing scheduled payments are treated as Faster Payments and explicitly “count as a transfer” (Add payees and set up payments). That’s a strong indicator that “transfer allowance” discussions are primarily about this kind of bank transfer activity.
Tide’s Smart allowance page lists Direct Debit under the sterling payment methods connected to its transfer allowance framing (Tide Smart free transfer allowance).
The edge case is confusion with cards: Direct Debit is not a card payment. It is a bank-account instruction resulting in account-to-account movement. That is why it typically sits under “transfer” logic, not “card transaction” logic.
Tide explicitly distinguishes the setup step from the payment itself: there is no fee to set up a Scheduled Payment/Standing Order, but each payment execution counts as a transfer (Add payees and set up payments).
That means the allowance impact follows your schedule. A monthly standing order consumes one transfer each month; a weekly standing order consumes roughly four (or sometimes five) transfers in months with more occurrences.
Pay.UK describes Bacs as an electronic transfer service used to make payments between accounts, typically Direct Debit and Direct Credit (Bacs Payment System).
In Tide’s Smart-plan allowance article, Bacs is listed among the ways you can receive payments in pounds sterling under the “free transfer allowance” context (Tide Smart free transfer allowance). The practical implication is that Bacs receipts can be relevant to the monthly transfer counter, depending on your plan and the specific transaction type.
Tide’s plan table distinguishes between a limited number of free transfers and per-transfer charges once the limit is exceeded (plans and pricing). So the usual outcome is that transfers continue to process, but the pricing changes once the monthly quota is exhausted.
Where this becomes operationally visible is in months with lots of administrative payments (for example multiple supplier payments, tax-related payments, and regular standing orders). The “allowance” is a pricing mechanic; it does not change the underlying payment rails, but it can change the marginal cost of each additional transfer event.
Tide describes a calendar-month billing cycle for paid plans (1st to last day of each month, collected on the 1st) (When will I be billed my membership fees?).
Tide also uses “monthly” language for free transfers in the context of scheduled payments and plan allowances (Add payees and set up payments). Taken together, the allowance is best interpreted as a monthly counter that refreshes with the monthly cycle rather than a rolling-day concept.
Tide’s paid-plan billing article explains that upgrades are charged pro-rata for the remaining days of the month, and the next billing cycle collects the full monthly price (When will I be billed my membership fees?).
Whether the transfer allowance counter changes immediately, partially, or from the next cycle can depend on the plan-change implementation and what Tide shows in-app for that account at that time. If you’re comparing “what changes now versus at renewal”, we cover the broader plan-change timing mechanics in Downgrading a Tide plan: what changes immediately vs at renewal.
The key distinction is the rail. Card payments and many merchant acquiring flows settle through card/acquiring infrastructure, not through a simple “bank transfer to/from another bank account” event. Tide’s published pricing separates card transactions from transfers (plans and pricing).
However, merchant products can ultimately result in money landing in your account as a credit entry. Whether that credit is counted as a “transfer” for allowance purposes depends on how Tide classifies the receipt and which rail is used for that credit.
This is one reason the Smart allowance language explicitly calling out “inbound and outbound transfers” is important (Tide Smart free transfer allowance).
Tide’s plan descriptions and allowance wording are framed at the account/plan level, not as a personal quota per team member (plans and pricing). In other words, the allowance is typically best thought of as attached to the plan subscription and the account it governs.
Where teams can get caught out is volume: multiple people making payments can increase the number of transfer events, which consumes the shared monthly allowance faster. That’s not a “penalty”; it’s simply how a transfer-count quota behaves when activity is distributed across users.
“Free transfer allowance” is a pricing abstraction over multiple UK payment rails. Tide simplifies the experience by letting customers think in “number of transfers per month”, even though the underlying system includes different rails (Faster Payments, Direct Debit, Bacs) and separate pricing buckets for other activities (cash deposits, CHAPS fees, card use).
The practical constraint is that the allowance is a counter, not a guarantee of “no fees”. It explains one slice of cost behaviour: how many bank-transfer events happen in a month.
That’s why edge cases (like lots of inbound micro-payments, or frequent standing orders) can matter more than transaction value when the allowance is defined in units.
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