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PerkStreet $50 Bonus Promotion
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High yield savings accounts are all the rage these days because of their high interest rates, but there are very few online checking accounts making the rounds. PerkStreet Financial is the online checking account product from PerkStreet Financial, which has partnered with The Bancorp Bank to offer an FDIC insured online checking account. The Bancorp Bank, an FDIC insured (Certificate #35444) since July 2000, publicly traded (TBBK) bank headquartered in Delaware.
Until Dec 31st, you can get a $50 bonus if you deposit at least $25 and keep the account active for three consecutive months. The $50 is deposited fifteen business days after the third month. There are no other requirements.
With their online checking account you get all the features of any checking account including:
- A Visa Debit Card with 1% cash back, free music or coffee
- Free checks
- No minimum balance requirement
- No monthly fees when you use your account ($4.50 any month you don’t use the account)
- 37,000 surcharge-free ATMs
- Free online banking and bill pay
You won’t earn interest on your money in the checking account but very few debit cards offer 1% cash back rewards.
Added bonus – you can fund up to $500 of your deposit from a credit card and it counts as a purchase. It’s a great way to help bust cashback tiers (at least a little bit) without lugging around all those coins.
Can anyone see any downside to this?
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Only potential downside: credit score
Does opening a checking account issue you their PerkStreet FinancialSM Visa® Debit Card? If so, are they hard-pulling credit on the inquiry and if you close this after the 3 months (to get your $50) what effect would that have on your score?
I don’t see anything about any credit pulls on their page. Aren’t banks required to collect SSN on all their depositors?
My experience has been if the account has overdraft protection expect a hard pull.
Closing a 3 month old account should have zero impact on your score unless your file is thin to begin with.
saladdin
Generally, yes. I’m still not finding it anywhere in their FAQ section.
It’s not that uncommon for banks not to say on their online site. Just call and ask.
I thought they had to disclose it before making a hard pull. Is the implication of extending credit (in the form of overdraft protection) enough?
This might be a downside -
“# 1% cash back: Choose from a PerkStreet Financial Visa® Gift Card or gift cards from Target®, Best Buy®, Amazon.com®, GAP and Ticketmaster®”
That is not exactly cash back, and I wonder if one has to pay a fee for the gift card. When I think of cash back, I think of a credit to my account.
Not quite cash, but if you make frequent purchases at one of them, it’s almost as good.
If you use your search engine like Yahoo, Google, or Baidu, then you may see different deals as you reload the term “perkstreet”. You can get $50, and another $50 after 2 months of completing 10 debit POS-nopin-transactions and close out. Or, $100.
A note about “Added bonus – you can fund up to $500 of your deposit from a credit card and it counts as a purchase. It’s a great way to help bust cashback tiers (at least a little bit) without lugging around all those coins.”; The Deposit Agreement and Schedule of Fees states that if you fund deposit by credit card, PerkStreet will charge a 2.5% funding fee. Also, deposits earn no interest. For Cashback, you can get a VISA giftcard; this can ultimately be used wherever the VISA card is accepted… of course, the card probably has an expiration date. For hard credit card pulls, if they pull by hard pull, it probably wont affect your credit score too much; 10-25 points most. If you close it after several months, it doesnt affect your credit score any further; unless, you open a new checking account that does a hard pull.
Do you think they kick back 1% on debits since they don’t have to use labor to process the checks? Sounds like it to me. Also the offer you mention is attractive, Thanks!
John DeFlumeri Jr.
They don’t have any real labor on check processing either, unless you mail them a check. It’s all done electronically now through Check21.
My guess is it’s the visa/mastercard processing fees of debit vs credit that is the reason.
saladdin
They’re offering 1% back on transactions processed as credit. That’s part of the fee they collect from the merchant. Banks would rather process as credit since they get fees, merchants would rather you do debit since they’re free, or have significantly lower fees for the merchant.
Well, thats an easy $50. Only downside I could see would be the 4.50 fee if you don’t use the account but just close it after the 3 months. I think that since you have to keep the account “active” to get the bonus you probably have to make at least one debit each month during the three months.
From their fees page, “Doing any of the following at least once each month ensures that you won’t be assessed a monthly inactivity fee: making a transaction with your debit card, writing a check that clears the account, using Online Bill Pay, initiating a withdrawal or making a deposit to the account.”
So, it looks like a $1 EFT deposit followed by a $1 EFT debit would strictly follow the rules (though possibly not the spirit).
These type of deals happen all the time. But some drawbacks for me is that my penfed card offers a higher cashback and I would have to pull money out of my savings and lose interest off that money to fund a new checking account. Plus, I have to remember to do the three transactions a month, go through the trouble of closing the account.
All that being said, if I had a tiered card I would jump at this.
saladdin
I’m on the fence about this for now. I could pull $30 out of savings and put it in the account, make a $1.00 purchase each month to keep it active, and close it at the end of 3 months and net $45.00. I think its a great deal for someone who needs to bust tiers.
If it has an online bill pay function the easiest way to keep an account active is to have it mail a check right to you or better yet, right to another one of your bank accounts.
Sounds great! Not that I need another checking account, but it wouldn’t be hard to keep it open for three months for the bonus. Buy lunch with their card every once an a while. End up with an extra fifty bucks, not bad.
Jim
Interesting find.
I’d be curious about your views as to whether these sort of sign up offers make sense. Given that they usually have a fair number of fees in the fine print and often require that the depositor actually use the account, it almost seems like the hassle isn’t worth the return.
Instead, it seems like it makes the most sense to sign up at LendingClub or some other place which offers a bonus and a chance to make a real investment, not just pad the banks bottom line.
Plus, I think $50 dollars is chump change. If they offered $100 or $200, it might be worth it.
Thanks, keep up the great work.
-James
I think they’re worth it if you can avoid the fees and don’t mind the extra work. $50 isn’t $100 or $200 but it can go a long way in some budgets, plus it’s a fairly easy promotion to take advantage of.
$50 is still 200% profit on the initial $25 investment, that you get to keep too. It’s a little work, but I don’t know of anywhere giving 800% interest on a 3 month investment.
@jim – nice find!
I found the signing in process super easy. For $50, remembering to buy a cup of coffee with a new debit card is no big deal!
If you are only in it for the $50, I don’t see a downside (if they don’t hard-pull your credit report, of course). If you are in it for more than the $50, the biggest issue I see is not earning interest on your balance… Find a bank that has a reward checking account (mine is paying 5.01% right now!). There are a few hoops they make you jump through, but I guarantee you they are things you are doing now anyways.
If they do a hard pull, and I’m not saying that they do since I don’t know, how much is that worth? Even if your profile is thin, a hard pull means little after 6 months and virtually nothing after a year. Unless you’re planning on taking on a lot of debit soon, $50 might be worth a hard pull.
How much is a hard pull worth to you?
The consensus seems to be they only do a hard pull if you select the “Plus” checking, which includes overdraft protection.
Also thanks SavingEverything – I googled a couple times and eventually ended up with the $100 promotion instead of the $50.
Sorry. I didn’t see your post. I posted a link to the $100 in below post.
saladdin
there is no hard pull of credit for a checking account whether it is the Overdraft Protection (checking plus) or standard checking account.
Seems like a decent bonus offer, however the bold “Bad Request” message I get when loading the site in Firefox is discouraging. I did get the homepage to load in IE.
BTW, I have deleted the Firefox cookie for perkstreet and the page now loads fine.
Does anybody know if the PerkStreet checking account plays well with Mint.com or Quicken?
I’m not finding PerkStreet, digitalbancorpbank.com (where their login page redirects), or The Bancorp Bank anywhere in mint.com’s list.
The bonus is up to $100.
link
saladdin
I am not sure if I would want a hard pull on my credit score for 50 bucks!
I wouldn’t mind considering I’m not going to get a loan in the near future (within 6-12 months), but otherwise I’d agree with you – $50 wouldn’t be worth a hard pull if the score dropped you and you paid a lot more on the back end from a loan.
Thanks for the $100 bonus link.
Unfortunately, they dont allow accounts to be funded with a Amex card. No tier busting here unless you have a Visa or MC.
Another place that doesn’t accept AMEX… add it to the list. AMEX & discover are just a little too hard to use, but only because Visa & MC are so easy.
Thank you for your inquiry regarding Perkstreet Bank. We pull a soft credit inquiry for account applicants; it will not show as a hard inquiry on your credit report.
Please let me know if you have any additional questions.
Does the initial deposit have to be from a credit card? I just opened one, but selected transfer from bank and although I entered my initial deposit amount at time of sign-up, I still needed to have the account verified before any transfers could occur.
Anyone know?
No it doesn’t have to be but bank accounts need to be verified with small deposits and whatnot.
Right, so why ask how much I want to deposit on the sign up page if it has to be verified first and I have to go back through and submit another transfer for that same amount?
They should verify it on their own by sending two small deposits to your bank account. When it’s confirmed, the actual transfer will occur.
Right. My question was once I verified my account, would the initial deposit automatically transfer into the account (I had a $0.00 balance).
I called customer service and they said I needed to make another transfer – which is why I asked why they even asked for the initial funding amount on sign up – but only after I made that transfer did I notice that the initial deposit was “processing” from 2 days ago.
Bottom line: If you sign up and provide initial funding from a bank transfer (vs. credit card) your initial deposit will remain dormant until you verify your account. Once verified, it will process (which contradicts what their customer service told me).
Also, there is a $2.50 charge for any transfers from this account out to another bank. They neglect to state this on their Fees page, however I was suspicious when I had to “opt in” to enable transfers out.
Just got an email from Perk for a survey. 5 question survey will get $10 in your account.
Check your email/spam folder.
Anyone else get this?
saladdin
Watch out for these people.
You more then likely will not get the bonus.
There system is junk. Bonus does not get applied to every account because of software glitches.
“Thanks for your email; I apologize for the trouble. Please provide your full name or account number and I will reset your information. I think that there was a processing error in our New Accounts department as several other customers were affected as well.
Best Regards,
Steve
Customer Correspondence
The Bancorp Bank
409 Silverside Rd
Suite 105
Wilmington, DE 19809
302-385-5000″
wallyhts-
I hope our team in customer service resolved the issue to your satisfaction. I looked into cause of the problem and can assure you that the problem was not a system wide issue. Our infrastructure partner, The Bancorp Bank, is a leading player in the space and together we’ve been able to fulfill all of the bonus offers to date.
Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any other concerns
Jason Henrichs
Chief Operating Officer
Reminder: move your money this month!
Anyone gotten a bonus yet? I should have fulfilled the requirements as of 3 days ago, so now I just have to wait (hopefully).
Yes.
Go to your Perks section and you can see the date they will put it in your account.
saladdin
So I signed up, completed the three transactions (one per month as required) and nothing.
I checked the Perks section and I have 0 dollars with no indication as to when they’re going to put the $100 into my account.
Anyone else left holding the bag here?
Shady.
Perkstreet is a modern day thug. They find excuses for not issuing your bonus. There will always be thieves.
I regret that you believe that we don’t treat our customers fairly.
Our offer requirements are straightforward and we don’t believe they’re all that hard to meet: For customers who opened their accounts with the intention of using them, this bonus offer has been incredibly easy to earn and we’ve been awarding bonuses regularly. To qualify for the bonus, customers only need to use their account one time every month for the first three months.
To be fair to all of our customers, our offer terms and conditions clearly define a month as 30 days, beginning with the day the account was opened. We did not define a month as a calendar month since it would unfairly penalize customers opening an account late in the month.
If you met the offer requirements and were treated unfairly, please let me know so I can resolve this immediately. You can contact me at jhenrichs ‘@’ perkstreet.com
There are several problems with this bank, so I would warn potential customers to be aware of the fine print. Although PerkStreet’s website has the appearance of being clear about their policies, I found that not to be the case. These “fine print” policies seem designed to (1) make it difficult to move money out of the account, and (2) to limit the cashback that you can earn. Below are examples.
(1) They have a limit of $1500 on incoming online transfers in an entire *month*! They don’t tell you about this anywhere except when you actually try to move money into your account. When I called them about it, they said that they have this restriction for new customers and I was still in my first month. After a couple more calls, I realized that they will increase this limit to $2500 after six months.
Stated reason: Security.
Suspected motive: To limit the amount of money you can spend to get cashback.
(2) They have a limit of $500 on outgoing online transfers. So, say you move $5000 into your account to get 2% cashback. You are stuck with that money with them for the rest of the month (unless you adopt a slower paper check route).
(3) They have a limit of $1500 on daily expenses and explicitly say on their website that it can be waived simply by making a phone call. I had to book two one-way international flight tickets that cost a total of over $1500. I booked these and called them to waive the limit. They refused to do so because I was still in my first month. There is no notice about waivers not being allowed in the first month anywhere. As a result, I have to now spend much more money re-booking that ticket just because PerkStreet does not allow me to spend my own money.
Stated reason: Security for new customers. They claim that all banks have spending limits on debit cards. Really? Bank of America did not.
Suspected motive: Limiting spending => limiting cashback.
(4) When I tried to circumvent the limitation in (1) above to move more money into my account using FedEx, there was another surprise! The first FedEx check takes not 1 day as stated, but about 9 days for some reason. Again, some vague security reason that is incomprehensible to rational beings is given as an explanation.
Bottomline: It is not easy to get much cashback because of their restrictive policies on what you can do with your money. And they make it harder to move money out of the account while not giving any interest on it. As for the 5% cashback, they are on such specific and tiny items that I have never been able to get 5% cashback so far.
AV-
I’m the COO at PerkStreet. I’m sorry for the trouble you’ve had with your account- each of the items you’ve encountered are efforts to eliminate fraud, not to limit the amount you can earn. We’re continuing to work with our banking services partner to reduce the friction felt by customers without increasing the amount of fraud. One of the things we’ve done is to waive the balance requirement for the first 3 months so good customers can earn 2% while they build their balances even with these constraints in place.
I’d appreciate the opportunity to chat with you about how this can be better handled by customer service and use it as an opportunity to better educate our team. If you will drop me a note to jhenrichs -at- perkstreet.com, I’d appreciate your time.
As you noted in #1 / #2, the limits change as our relationship with you grows. One thing you can do to get money into your account more quickly is to initiate the transfer from your existing institution where the fact that you own the account is assured through possession of the username and password of that account.
For the daily limits you mention in #3, many banks (including BoA) have limits to prevent accounts from getting cleaned out. You can see how consistent this is across banks: http://bit.ly/C3GCt and it is an area we are working to innovate.
On your last point, the first time a check is received it is held until the funds clear before they are made available.
I hope this helps clarify the “why” things happened although it doesn’t completely alleviate the pain of the “what” happens as banks try to prevent fraud.
I look forward to touching base and getting more of your feedback.
Perkstreet is advertised on the Dave Ramsey website, but doesn’t allowing a customer to use a credit card to fund up to $500 to open an account go against the Dave Ramsey creed?
That’s probably something you need to take up with Dave Ramsey.