The majority of bank account bonuses have a direct deposit requirement, strictly speaking this is supposed to be from payroll or a government benefit. The most popular bonuses don’t have this direct deposit requirement, but you’re really missing out on a lot of value if you only focus on accounts without this requirement.
The most common is to simply do an ACH transfer from an existing account (keep in mind that you can see datapoints for what does/doesn’t work for each bank here), this works the majority of times but it seems some banks & credit unions are cracking down on these transfers that code as P2P (person to person). Below are a number of ways to uniquely meet this requirement.
- Tax Refund. Technically your tax refund counts as a government payment and as government benefits are almost always included as a qualifying direct deposit this should always work. Remember that you can also split your tax refund as well.
- Topcashback Payout. Topcashback (cashback shopping portal) offers the ability to get funds transferred to your bank account via ACH. This seems to work more often than a regular ACH from one of your own accounts (likely because it’s coming from a different name and also a business account so it’s not showing as a P2P transfer)
- Prepaid cards. Often work when ACH do not, this is because they don’t show up as a P2P transfer. Unfortunately most people will no longer have access to an American Express Serve or Bluebird card.
- Withdrawal From Trading/Investing/Brokerage Platform (e.g E*Trade, Robinhood, Fidelity etc). This likely shows up as investment income or similar.
- Amazon Payments. If you sell things on Amazon then you should be able to request a deposit into your new account. More info here.
- Raise.com Payout. Raise is a third party gift card exchange, if you sell your gift cards on there you can request a payout to the account you’re trying to get a bonus on. The raise account should be a business account so should be useful for meeting minimum spend requirements.
If anybody else has any sneaky ways they get around this direct deposit requirement, let us know in the comments. We will make sure to add it to our master database here.
Chase business checking ACH payments usually count everywhere as a direct deposit. There is a $2.50 fee per payment for it, but it will be coded as a DD almost anywhere. The free ACH service is not a sure thing.
Anyone else is reimbursement from a Flexible Spending Account as a DD? Going to try this. It definitely is a “benefits provider,” so hoping might work for SoFi, we’ll see.
Yes, I have my FSA linked to my SoFi checking account. Every time I get reimbursed I get a “you’ve just been paid early” notification like my payroll direct deposits
I can vouch that Treasury Direct works, but it seems to be inconvenient to change banks.
I keep it linked to my HMBradley. Occasionally, I use it as DD to get my higher tier at HMB. E.g. when my work DD is temporarily switched to other banks for bonuses.
As of mid-2021, eBay stopped utilizing PayPal and now engages in Direct Deposits.
I signed up for a Chase Checking account to take advantage of the $225 bonus and Disney discounts.
I can confirm after eBay deposited my sales money, that chase counted it as a form of Direct Deposit and will be sending my $225 soon
Robinhood is almost useless especially if you have high and/or frequent Direct Deposit requirements.
Robinhood has Money Launder restrictions since it is an investment account. That means Money that from one bank account to Robinhood, can only go out to another bank account after 60days.
I have not tried to just use the same bank, but they may notice it transfer money forth and back between them and Robinhood.
Even without that it is a hassle, it takes a week for the deposited money to be withdraw-able and you can have only 3 different institutions linked with bank accounts.
Old thread, I know, but I was able to withdraw from Robinhood to a different bank than the one I deposited money in initially back in 2019, but they now prevent that as of 2020. Dunno why I was able to before, particularly as the above comment is from 2017.
So yeah, unless you keep money in RH for 60 days, it’s not a workable route to meeting DD requirements. And no, I don’t think you can buy securities, sell them, and then wd to different bank.
If i deposit a paycheck at the bank does it count for chase ????
Does anyone know if a ACH transfer from Capitol one or any online bank works for the bonus of $300?
Venmo. Discover cashback works for lots of stuff. I imagine Citi cashback does as well.
Did some light driving for Uber for a bit. A $4 deposit triggered my Chase $300 bonus.
Nice
I was using my fidelity checking account (cash management account) and it worked for over a dozen DD requirements. but on pnc it did not work, showed up as “transfer” instead of “FID Moneyline”. So I’ve been using my TIAA-Direct checking account and on PNC it showed up as “other income”. TIAA used to be a teachers pension and trust and on description it says “trust”. Its my #1 ach push now.