Those who opt to opening a free online checking account through Perk Street Financial online will receive a $50 bonus. To qualify for this promotion, new accounts need to be opened online by Feb. 28, 2010. Other terms to qualify for the checking account include:
- First-time PerkStreet Financial checking account customers only
- Minimum of $25 to open account
- No monthly fees as long as account is not left sitting idle
- FDIC Insured up to $250,000
As the name implies, this online banker offers substantial perks to their customers including:
- 1% cash back incentive through PerkStreet Financial Visa Gift Card or or gift cards from Target, Best Buy, Amazon.com, GAP and Ticketmaster (with qualifying accounts)
- Free music from iTunes, Rhapsody or Amazon.com (with qualifying accounts)
- Free coffee in the form of gift cards from Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, Peet’s Coffee and Tea and Bruegger’s Bagels (with qualifying accounts)
- A large fee free ATM network
Customers can open their accounts online within about five minutes time. Perk Street Financial online is the offshoot of the The Bancorp Bank based in Wilmington Delaware.
Other Terms and Conditions may apply. Additionally, rates may have changed since this offer was posted. Please contact the financial institution for the most recent rate updates and to review the terms of the offer.
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.