NBKC Bank Review: Top Online Institution With Great Checking Account

4.4

SCORE

GOBankingRates Best Banks 2023 scores and rankings are objectively determined by our research/editorial team. Our scoring formula weighs several factors that differ from category to category depending on what consumers want from varying products and banks.

Quick Take: NBKC is a reputable online bank with a limited number of branch locations and a network of more than 37,000 ATMs. The bank is known for its flexible products and competitive rates.

• Checking Accounts
  4.5
• Money Market Accounts
  4.5
• CD Accounts
  4.5
• Banking Experience
  4.0

How did we calculate this?

NBKC Bank Overview

NBKC Bank was founded in 1999 as Horizon National Bank. In 2004, the bank’s name was changed to National Bank of Kansas City, and in 2015 rebranded as NBKC Bank. The bank is headquartered in Overland Park, Kansas, and it has four locations across the greater Kansas City, Missouri, area.

What really stands out about NBKC Bank is the wide variety of products it offers. The bank has checking, savings, money market accounts and CDs. If you want to expand your banking relationship, it also offers home-equity and bridge loans as well as auto loans, personal loans (Kansas City metro area only) and credit cards. GOBankingRates has ranked NBKC as a Best Online Banks of 2023 and Best Checking Accounts of 2023 finalist. 

Though it has brick-and-mortar locations, NBKC Bank operates primarily as an online bank. You can use the mobile app to make deposits, transfer money and monitor your accounts. If you need to withdraw cash, you also can access the bank’s network of MoneyPass ATMs.

Key Features

Learn more about the features that make NBKC one of GOBankingRates’ Best Online Banks of 2023.

Checking Accounts

The Everything Account is designed to be everything you want in a checking and savings account. There’s no minimum opening balance requirement, and the bank doesn’t charge monthly fees. In addition to this, GOBankingRates has ranked it as one of the Best Checking Accounts of 2023.

The checking account comes with a free Mastercard debit card you can use to make purchases, pay bills or access ATMs — MoneyPass ATMs are free, and NBKC will reimburse up to $12 per month in fees from out-of-network ATMs. And, of course, you get full access to online and mobile banking, where you can set up bill pay, review and manage your accounts, deposit checks and make transfers.

NBKC doesn’t offer a standalone basic savings account, but you can set up Savings Goals within an Everything Account. With Savings Goals, you set target dates to reach your goals, and the app tells you how much you have to deposit on a recurring basis to meet them. You can fund your goals with automatic transfers or transfer money in whenever you want. Up to 10 Savings Goals can be active at any given time, and you can close or make withdrawals from a goal whenever you want, with no penalty. The only caveats are that you can’t use goals for overdraft protection, and you can’t spend funds directly from a goal — you must transfer money into your Everything Account or money market account, and then spend it.

The Everything Account, including Savings Goal funds, earns a highly competitive on all balances, and the only fees you’ll pay are for wire transfers: $5 to send a domestic wire, $45 to send or receive an international wire.

It’s important to note that deposits for new accounts are held for five days.

Money Market Account

NBKC’s Personal Money Market account is meant to take the place of a traditional savings account. As is typical with a money market account, your money earns premium rates — 1.51% on all balances in this case — but, unlike most MMAs, there’s no minimum deposit required.

Although you may use the NBKC MMA for bill pay, and the account comes with a Mastercard debit card, federal law limits withdrawals to six per month. For maximum flexibility, pair it with an Everything Account.

CD Accounts

NBKC offers CDs with term limits ranging from three months to five years. Rates for terms of one year or longer are quite competitive, ranging from 2.53% for a one-year CD to 3.04% for five-year CDs. Rates for shorter terms are 0.10% for personal CDs. You can also opt for an add-on CD that you can add to before maturity, or a personal individual retirement account CD.

NBKC CDs have minimum opening deposit requirements for all but the add-on CD. For personal and IRA CDs, the minimum is $1,000 for terms up to one year and $250 for longer terms. You may not withdraw principal funds from a CD within 75 days of opening or renewal; after that, NBKC will consider early-withdrawal requests. Early withdrawals made outside of a 10-day grace period incur a penalty of three months’ interest. 

Banking Experience

Unless you live in the Kansas City, Missouri, area, you won’t have access to a physical bank branch and will be able to bank digitally only. However, the bank offers a free mobile app that allows you to deposit funds and monitor your accounts at all times. If you need to withdraw money, NBKC gives its customers access to more than 37,000 MoneyPass ATMs. The NBKC website has an ATM locator that lets you filter searches by those that accept cash deposits.

You can open an account either online or at one of the bank’s branch locations. You’ll need to have your Social Security number and a government-issued ID to open the account.

Digital Banking

NBKC provides a free mobile app to all of its customers, which is available for both iOS and Android devices. The mobile app is fairly intuitive to use and lets customers deposit checks, manage their accounts and transfer funds between accounts.

The app is rated 4.1 out of 5 stars on Google Play and 4.5 via the App Store.

Customer Service

For general account support, you can call NBKC Bank at 888-905-2165 Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. CST. If you need help with mobile and online banking, you can call 866-931-0850 from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. CST.

The bank provides 24/7 phone support at 833-933-1681 if your debit card is lost or stolen. And the bank offers chat support on its website during normal business hours, plus email.

Comparable Online Bank Options

Here’s how NBKC compares to two of its competitors.

Capital One

Capital One’s 360 Performance Savings account earns interest, and the bank has a savings account for children with a APY. But NBKC offers better rates for its checking account, and its interest rates aren’t tiered.

Ally Bank

Unlike NBKC, Ally offers separate checking and savings accounts, with better interest than NBKC on savings, plus 24/7 customer service. However, NBKC’s checking APY is higher than what Ally offers, and it has a few branch locations while Ally has none.

Final Take

NBKC Bank is a great option for anyone looking for an online bank with competitive rates and no fees. The checking account comes with a generous APY and is easy to manage with the bank’s mobile app.

If you’re a Kansas City, Missouri, area resident, you can bank at any of the four branch locations. But if you don’t live in the region, you’ll still have access to the bank’s large ATM network, which includes ATMs where you can make cash deposits. That makes NBKC a great choice no matter where you live, as long as you’re comfortable doing all of your banking online.

See All Best Banks

Daria Uhlig contributed to the reporting for this article.

Editorial Note: This content is not provided by any entity covered in this article. Any opinions, analyses, reviews, ratings or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the author alone and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any entity named in this article.

Methodology: To determine rankings for the Best Online Banks, GOBankingRates looked at the following factors across exclusively online banks: (1) total assets as sourced from the FDIC; (2) monthly checking fee ratio (percentage based on the minimum to avoid the fee compared to the monthly fee itself); (3) savings APY; (4) 1-year CD APY; (5) customer service options and mobile products offered (24/7 customer service, live chat with a human, mobile app and remote check deposit); (6) Bauer rating (out of 5 stars); (7) products/services offered (auto loans, mortgage loans, credit cards, investment services and insurance); and (8) the average mobile app rating between the Android and Apple app stores. Factors (1) and (2) were weighted 0.5 times, and factors (3) and (7) were weighted 2 times. For all savings and checking account data, only the basic accounts/products offered at each institution were analyzed.

Methodology: To determine rankings for the Best Checking Accounts, GOBankingRates looked at the following factors from all banks (excluding credit unions): (1) total assets as sourced from the FDIC; (2) number of branch locations as sourced from the FDIC; (3) minimum deposit to open an account; (4) monthly checking fee ratio (percentage based on the minimum to avoid the fee compared to the monthly fee itself); (5) APY on the checking account; (6) overdraft fee amount; and (7) the average mobile app rating between the Android and Apple app stores. All factors were then scored and combined, with the lowest score being best. Factors (1), (2 and (5) were weighted 0.5 times, and factor (4) was weighted 1.5 times. 

Rates are subject to change; unless otherwise noted, rates are updated periodically. All other information on accounts is accurate as of Dec. 21, 2022.

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