[LA only?] La Capitol Federal Credit Union 4.25% On Balances Up To $3,000 – Direct Deposit Not Required

Offer at a glance

  • Interest Rate: 4.25%
  • Minimum Balance: None
  • Maximum Balance: $5,000 $3,000
  • Availability: Possibly LA only. Might be open to anybody by joining ACHIEVE?
  • Direct deposit required: No
  • Additional requirements: 25 debit card transactions
  • Hard/soft pull: Hard pull
  • ChexSystems: Unknown
  • Credit card funding: Unknown
  • Monthly fees: None
  • Insured: NCUA

The Offer

Direct link to offer

  • La Capitol Federal Credit Union offers the All Access Advantage Checking account. This account offers a rate of 4.25% APY on balances up to $5,000 when you meet the following requirements:
    • 25 or more non-ATM debit card transactions posted per month
  • Balances over $5,000 earn 0.15%. If requirements are not met the full account earns 0.15% APY.

The Fine Print

  • Qualification to earn dividends: – 25 or more posted non-ATM debit card transactions per month: – 4.25% APY on balances up to but not exceeding $5,000 – .15% APY on balances exceeding $5,000. If qualification stated is not met: – .15% APY on entire balance. Must meet criteria for opening a checking account.
  • All bank account bonuses are treated as income/interest and as such you have to pay taxes on them

Avoiding Fees

This account has no monthly fees to worry about. If you sign up for eStatements you also get ATM fee refunds up to $25 per month. You need to opt out of blazing otherwise you will be charged a $4.95 fee starting in July.

Our Verdict

4.25% APY is on of the better high yield saving accounts currently available and it’s nice that this doesn’t have a direct deposit requirement. It’s also fairly easy to meet the debit card requirements as well. This account is not worth considering if you don’t hit that debit card requirement and it’s not worth having more than $5,000 in funds (even the elite savings account has an APY of only 0.25%). I do think there are better options out there (and we list all of those here) but this is another option for people that need more capacity than they currently have.

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13 Comments
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killdozer
killdozer (@guest_1389227)
June 1, 2022 17:12

Lowered to $3000 max now

Chuck
Editor
Chuck(@chucksithe)
June 1, 2022 23:21

I’ll update

Bockrr
Bockrr (@guest_1549174)
February 3, 2023 19:00

Seems their high yield account has been renamed, and the cap raised to $10,000

https://www.lacapfcu.org/choice-checking

Jacob
Jacob (@guest_1088484)
November 11, 2020 00:25

Looks like they’ve changed the APY a bit too, 2% APY on balances $3,000-$10,000: “Qualification to earn dividends: – 15 or more posted non-ATM debit card transactions per month: – 4.25% APY on balances up to but not exceeding $3,000 – 2.00% APY on balances over $3,000 and up to but not exceeding $10,000 – 0.10% APY on balances exceeding $10,000. If qualification stated is not met: – 0.10% APY on entire balance.”

Also the direct link above didn’t seem to work for me, here’s one that does: https://www.lacapfcu.org/personal-checking-account-information#Choice

eatthatkale
eatthatkale (@guest_1052680)
September 11, 2020 15:38

La Capitol Federal Credit Union is paying a $50/$50 referral bonus for new Choice Checking accounts. Account still pays 4.25% on balances up to $3,000. No monthly fee with balance of $1,000+. Note that there is still a hard pull and it did take a few days to set up including providing PDFs of my social security card and a utility bill. I am almost certain they are not Chex sensitive, given the dozens of accounts we’ve opened this year.

There is also an extra annual bonus program including $20 once per year if you maintain a $1,000 balance for at least 10 months.

No limit is specified online but credit card funding is available. Not sure if it codes as cash advance. I was told, after I already exceeded it and they couldn’t change it, that the limit is $1,000 per account. I ended up depositing $1K by check (initial mobile deposit limit) with the app.

It is not Louisiana only. Out of state membership is available by joining ACHIEVE, $20 first year, $5 / year after that. I have heard you may not need to continue ACHIEVE after first year. My P2 was eligible for free as an immediate family member.

For us it was a nice addition after maxing out our DCU and Netspend accounts. (Was turned down by Blue FCU due to Chex.)

My referral link: [REMOVED]

Dinarte
Dinarte (@guest_828705)
October 22, 2019 02:42

Maximum amount on 4.25% is now capped at 3k

Feel TheJimm
Feel TheJimm (@guest_929914)
March 6, 2020 15:16

Now 2….lol.

Richard N
Richard N (@guest_674303)
November 17, 2018 10:50

Ok, here are my DP’s . THEY DO A HARD PULL ON EQUIFAX! The transaction requirement if you dont get the $4.95 a month Bla-zing features is 20 debit card transactions a month. Not really hard to get to. I mixed in some amazon gift card $1 purchases here and there.
They do accept out of state people but with one requirement. there is a $20 A YEAR fee for some organization. I forget which one but they did all the legwork. Since i was out of state, i had to send copies of my DL, my SS card and a utility bill. Now that im in, I see many accounts coming out with more interest. Now with the $20 a year fee, the HP and having to send them copies of my personal info I am really regretting getting into this one.

Turtle
Turtle (@guest_589156)
May 2, 2018 11:21

Account types changed today and if you don’t opt out of “BaZing” then you will be charged $4.99/month starting in July.

https://www.lacapfcu.org/bazingoptout

Current structure is Opt out of BaZing and you need 20 transactions for 4.25% on 3k and 2% on the next 7k

Turtle
Turtle (@guest_540211)
December 22, 2017 16:17

DP – I recently opened an account at their Metairie, LA branch. They require you to bring in a drivers license and utility bill. To open an account with the credit union you either need to live in a few parishes around Baton Rouge or pay $20 to join “ACHIEVE”. The $20 Achieve fee is supposed to be yearly but the banker told me you can cancel/not renew after the first year. The checking account also requires you to open a savings account which needs to be >$100 to avoid a $5 monthly service charge.

Also note the account required 25 debit card transaction AND one direct deposit per month. The terms on their website also don’t mention any required direct deposit, so maybe the banker I had was just confused.

It took 1.5 hours in the bank to get this account open which is by far the longest I’ve ever had to wait to open an account. He must have had to type the same info into 5 different forms, I got the impression their account creation software is not very efficient.

Jonathan
Jonathan (@guest_425924)
June 22, 2017 22:42

I looked into this CU a few years ago. I believe this checking account used to be Kasasa (doesn’t appear to be any longer). I think they have been in the 4% range for a number of years now which is a big plus.

jf
jf (@guest_529921)
December 4, 2017 09:02

would be interesting to see if this bank does allow out of state members to join. nobody has tried to join this one yet for only $5?? I will definitely be trying this out later today. They also have a decent visa 0% on bt’s for 12 months, 1.99% on purchases for 12 months, and variable APR as low as 7.25%….