Personal vs Business: What Actually Changes in the Price of a Polydirection Account

2026-09-10

Euro banknotes and a calculator on a desk

Polydirection's public fee page has two toggles sitting side by side: Account type (Personal or Business) and Region (EU or Non-EU). A previous look at this page covered what happens when the Region toggle moves for a Business account — up to a 3x difference just from where the account is registered. This time the toggle that matters is the first one: Personal versus Business, on the exact same fee schedule, before region is even considered.

It's easy to assume the difference is just "business costs more, because business." The actual numbers say something more specific: some fees scale hard with account type, and some don't move a single cent. Knowing which is which says a lot about what a business account is actually paying for.

Opening and Maintaining: Where the Real Gap Lives

Start with the account itself. Opening a Personal account is free. Opening a Business account costs 375 EUR if it's registered in the EU, or 1,075 EUR outside it. An additional account under an existing login follows the same pattern: 5 EUR for Personal, 50 EUR or 150 EUR for Business.

The gap doesn't close after the account is open — it becomes a recurring cost. Monthly maintenance on a Personal account is 1 EUR, flat, for both Regular and Active Spender tiers. On a Business account, that same line item is 35 EUR (EU) or 50 EUR (Non-EU) — a 35x to 50x jump for what is, on paper, the same word: "maintenance." Minimum balance follows the same direction: none required on Personal, 250 EUR (EU) or 750 EUR (Non-EU) parked and unavailable on Business. Even closing the account isn't symmetric — free on Personal, 100 EUR (EU) or 250 EUR (Non-EU) on Business.

Every one of these fees is about the account's existence, not what runs through it: opening, staying open, keeping a balance, closing. That's the cluster where Business really is a different, more expensive product.

The Part That Doesn't Change: Payment Rails

Here's the detail that's easy to miss and worth stating directly: SWIFT fees are identical across every combination — Personal, Business, EU, and Non-EU. Incoming SWIFT is 0.2% (minimum 10 EUR) and outgoing is 0.5% (minimum 35 EUR), no matter which toggle is set. SEPA outgoing moves only slightly — 3 EUR on Personal and on Business-EU, rising to 5 EUR only on Business-Non-EU.

If the pricing logic were simply "business pays more for everything," the payment rail fees would scale the same way the account fees do. They don't, because a SWIFT message costs the same to process regardless of what kind of account sent it. The rail doesn't know or care whether the sender ticked "Personal" or "Business" at signup — so the price doesn't move.

Why the Gap Isn't About Account Size

Put the two patterns side by side and the actual logic becomes visible. Account-level fees — opening, monthly maintenance, minimum balance, closing — track the ongoing due diligence, monitoring, and compliance work a bank has to do for a business account, which is genuinely heavier than what a personal account requires: KYB instead of just KYC, ongoing transaction monitoring against a stated business activity, and — for the industries Polydirection actually serves, like crypto, gambling, and forex — sector-specific compliance overhead on top of the standard business layer. Payment rail fees, on the other hand, are priced by the rail itself (SEPA, SWIFT), which doesn't change based on who's using it.

That distinction matters because it means the Business premium isn't arbitrary padding on every line item — it's concentrated specifically where the underlying cost of servicing the account actually differs.

What This Means When Choosing an Account Type

None of this is a case for avoiding a Business account — a business operating as a business generally needs one, and for high-risk industries in particular, a working Business account with a bank that actually accepts the sector is worth more than the fee gap costs. The practical point is narrower: the price difference between Personal and Business isn't one number to budget for, it's specifically the account infrastructure (opening, maintenance, minimum balance, closing) that carries the premium, while the payment rails a business actually uses day to day — SEPA, SWIFT — stay close to Personal pricing or identical to it. A founder pricing out a Business account should expect the account-level fees to be the real cost driver, not the transfers that follow.

Polydirection provides personal and business accounts for crypto, gambling, forex and dating businesses — see the full fee schedule on [the fees page](/fees/).