Hi Lisa
Having worked for one of the high street banks for 20+ years (not any more!!), I can help you here.
First of all, from the banks point of view - they only provide free (!) banking for personal customers, so the thing to remember is that if at any point they suspect a personal account is being used for business purposes they won't be happy.
So the only way you can use a personal account is if you are happy to have the account in just your personal name, and therefore any payments must also be made out to you personally. If you want to use a trading name, then you're not going to be able to use a personal account.
Usually when someone uses a trading name the account is set up as "Mr J Bloggs trading as Bloggs & Co". This then means that payments can be made out to either Mr J Bloggs or to Bloggs & Co without causing a headache. You can, however, choose to just have "Bloggs & Co", this will mean that you must ensure no-one makes payments out to you personally.
As regards charges on business accounts - most of the banks offer a free period for new business accounts (I opened mine in January and am on 2 years free banking), so one option is to keep changing banks each time your free period is ending. They also offer different types of business accounts, depending on how you're likely to use it, turnover etc. So even when I finish free banking I'm not expecting to pay charges as I will be utilising the internet, and ensuring that I make & receive the vast majority of my payments via electronic means.
I hope that helps, but happy to help if you have more queries.
Helen
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