[Expired] Alliant Checking $50 Signup Bonus, Easy Requirements

Just received the following e-mail from somebody at Alliant:

Hi Chuck, Hope you are doing well! I wanted to let you know that as of August 1, Alliant is no longer offering a $50 bonus for new checking accounts. If you can please update your recent article, we’d be very appreciative as we’d hate for folks to join and then be disappointed.

Offer at a glance

  • Maximum bonus amount: $50
  • Availability: Nationwide
  • Direct deposit required: None
  • Additional requirements: eStatements, one ACH transfer
  • Hard/soft pull: Soft pull
  • Credit card funding: None
  • Monthly fees: None
  • Early account termination fee: 6 months or bonus is forfeited
  • Expiration date: Unknown

The Offer

Alliant Credit Union offers new members of the credit union a $50 for opening an Alliant High-Rate Checking account.

In order to get this offer, you need to first signup to become a member of Alliant Credit Union (details below), and then you should get an offer via email a couple of days later with this checking offer and a (unique?) offer code. Don’t signup for a checking account at the time of opening the credit union account; then they won’t send you the offer.

I became an Alliant member and opened a savings account with them. A couple of days later, this $50 checking offer came via email. From what I gather, it’s a standard offer sent to new members.

Requirements

To get the $50 bonus, you have to open the High-Rate Checking account, and do these two requirements:

  • Signup for e-statements
  • Have one ACH transfer over to the Alliant checking account within 90 days of becoming a member

The terms are clear that any ACH is fine, no need for direct deposit, and any amount is fine as well, apparently.

(Here’s an old offer on PDF with the same details.)

Update: Readers report that so long as you meet the requirements, everyone has been getting the $50 bonus. Simply open the High-Rate Checking account at the time you signup to become a member, do the Requirements, and you should get the $50 bonus.

Membership Eligibility

Alliant Credit Union is open to select groups. Most of us become members by donating $10 to Foster Care to Success.

There is a $5 signup bonus from Alliant (as long as you don’t close out the account within 90-days of opening), bringing down the net cost to just $5.

The Fine Print

  • To qualify for the $50 bonus deposit offer, new member must open an Alliant checking account and meet the requirements of Alliant High Rate Checking within 90 days of his/her membership enrollment date and remain in good standing. Members who do not open checking or do not meet the high rate checking requirements during the timeframe do not qualify to receive the deposit.
  • The $50 bonus deposit offer is not transferable, is only valid for new Alliant members and cannot be used in conjunction with any other checking offer. One $50 bonus deposit per member.
  • Once we verify qualifications, we will deposit the $50 bonus deposit directly into the member’s account. Please allow up to 60 days for deposit to be made. Check the status of the bonus deposit on Alliant Online Banking.
  • The $50 bonus deposit is considered as taxable income and will be paid as a special dividend and reported on IRS Form 1099-INT.
  • This account must remain open for at least six months or the bonus amount will be subtracted from your checking or savings account upon closing.
  • When applying for your checking account, use the promo code sent to you in the offer email.
  • The 04/01/2016 High Rate Checking dividend provides an Annual Percentage Yield (APY) of 0.65% APY. The APY is accurate as of the 03/15/2016 dividend declaration date. Checking dividend may change after account is opened and is subject to change monthly.
  • There is no minimum balance requirement to open an Alliant Checking Account or to earn a dividend or to earn the bonus.

Avoiding Fees

Fee Schedule Link

  • There is a $1 paper statement fee; be sure to go paperless (you’ll probably do this at the time of account opening).
  • There is a $10 early termination fee if you close the account within 90-days of opening.
  • There is also a $10 inactivity fee. No info given on what’s called ‘inactivity.’

Our Verdict

Keep in mind that Alliant will do a Chex inquiry, and doing this bonus will likely result in two inquires; one when you initially become a member and a second when you open the checking account a few days later after getting the offer. It seems that you can just open the checking account at the same time you signup for the credit union, meet the requirements, and the $50 bonus will post.

Most people probably won’t do this just for the $50. However, Alliant is known for their high-yield savings account (currently, 1% APY), and many people have an account with them for that reason.

Also worth noting that the Alliant checking account is unique with .65% APY, a rate we don’t typically see, so the checking account can actually be useful to use as an ordinary checking account. (To get the .65% rate, you need to have a monthly ACH transfer into the account, something easily automated.)

The other thing to keep in mind is that there was once a $150 Alliant checking bonus back in 2014 so you might want to hold out for one of those. But I think $50 is more the standard offer.

 

Useful posts regarding bank bonuses:
    Chuck
  • On August 3, 2016, 11:00

View Comments (36)

  • Hello, I see you added the wording [Expired] on the subject, however I just got the email from Alliant in less than an hour ago. They have the promotion code in the email so I just open up the high rate checking account with them. I'll let you know whether they will still give me the $50 bonus. And I'm going to do the same thing for my parents' accounts too even though the $50 won't post, because I want to do the small loan.

  • I got a pending message after applying. It says I need to wait for an email to arrive within 2 days...

  • Keep in mind too that Alliant has a 0% balance transfer CC for 12 months with no fee

  • I opened an alliant CU account a few months ago and randomly got a $50 bonus. This post explains it.

    Anyway I also agree that their ACH service is the best I've ever seen (the second best I'd say is discover bank) so having an alliant account is a must if you are handling multiple accounts and need to move money often.

  • There's one more good reason to consider joining Alliant. If a person has no open installment loans (e.g. no mortgage, no car loan, no student loans, etc.) that will hurt his credit score. The folks at the myFICO forums figured out a clever way to circumvent this problem, where....

    (a) You can open an installment loan
    (b) Pay almost no interest on it (roughly $1 per year)
    (c) Make it so that your installment loan reports as almost but not entirely paid off
    (d) Make it so that it stays open for a full 5 years.

    The lender they recommend is Alliant. If anyone wants to follow how this works in more detail, you can read about it here:

    http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Understanding-FICO-Scoring/Adding-an-installment-loan-the-Share-Secure-technique/m-p/4506756

    • Thanks for providing this valuable information. I read the first three posts and I still have one question (which I can't find via any search function).

      If I have an existing Alliant savings (I use it for ACH to satisfy DD requirements of another bank) can I just use this for this SSL? I prefer not to open another savings, if its even allowed, but will if necessary. TIA!

      • Sure. The existing savings account you already have should work. I am not even certain you CAN have multiple but identical savings accounts with Alliant. I am not an expert with Alliant but I can see no reason why you'll have a problem. Don't hesitate to reach out to me on myFICO (I read all the comments that are made on that thread) and let me know how it goes for you.

    • Its very critical to keep in mind that this is a tool strictly to raise credit scores under certain conditions and enforcing a savings discipline. This is a SECURED loan to yourself. NOT an unsecured one. Credit scores rate each type of loan differently in the mix. You are borrowing your own money and paying interest on your own money. Thats no risk to the bank. Only upside. You do not get EXTRA money that you didnt originally have like other secured loans when illiquid collateral assets are used. We want to make sure people understand this SSL technique before doing something stupid.

      • Yep, you are totally right Ninja. The SSL technique is terrible if a person is trying to actually raise cash he doesn't have -- it absolutely won't work for that. Before you can get the $500 SSL, you have first got to deposit $500 in cash! The SSL is totally for the purpose of credit score building.

        The first post in that thread goes out of its way to make sure people understand the many people and situations that the technique will NOT work for. Here's a section from that post:

        Who will not benefit from this technique?
        * People who already have an open installment loan.
        * People who need to improve their score very fast (e.g. < 60 days)
        * People who do not have $510 to open a new savings account.
        * People who hope for some magic bullet, something that will raise their score a huge amount.
        These people should NOT use this technique. They will be disappointed.

        • Nice work writing all that up here and the FICO forums. You should guest post on blogs. Or have you own blog.

          Your name sounds like Come Get It Dude... CGID... haha... Then I realized its actually CreditGuyInDixie...

          Good work.

    • Hahaha, yeah, that's how I first found out about the $50 bonus, when signing up for Alliant to do SSLT. I'll post about it sometime soon.

      • Great. Look forward to it.

        BTW, that thread I mentioned is one I started there. The only thing a person needs to read is the first three posts in the thread -- the hundreds of follow-up comments are nice but totally not necessary. All essential info is updated as needed at the top.

        • Ahh, you wrote that OP. I don't think I've ever read a clearer guide to something in my life!

          Great info there.

          • BTW, I have cited your site (Doctor of Credit) a number of times in the discussion thread, typically when somebody says that they plan to call Alliant and ask them X or Y or Z.

            I explain that they should make it their general policy to avoid bothering the CSRs unless absolutely necessary and I always cite this when I explain why:

            https://www.doctorofcredit.com/dont-call-the-bank/

            Here's the advice I give, directly colored by my experience on DoC:

            "The approach as outlined above should enable you to do this painlessly and without involving a customer service rep at Alliant. (The exception being when you talk to the loan ofice for one minute a few days after you apply online.)

            Avoiding bothering the CSRs is good policy when you can, especially when you are doing something clever like this. It's absolutely fully legal and fully within Alliant's loan terms, but it's probably also a good idea to minimize the extent to which you are pushing it onto the CSR's radar. Some people here have run into CSR's limiting their options when they do that."

  • I joined Alliant and opened a savings account with them in February. There was no hard pull. Two weeks later I took out a Share Secure loan with them, and there was no hard pull for that either. I pulled my credit reports today and confirmed this again.

    The folks at the myFICO forums track Alliant very closely, and all of the people who post there report the same thing: soft pull only (as far as the big three credit bureaus go). There is likely a ChexSystems inquiry as well, but that's not uncommon when opening bank accounts.

    • Thanks CGID! Perhaps there's another Alliant CU that the FWF thread is referring to, but you're right myfico says Alliant hasn't needed a hard pull for a checking account since about 2011.

      • There's an Alliant Bank (http://www.alliantbank.com/), which is different from Alliant Credit Union. Maybe that's what they were talking about. Who knows. I can also confirm a soft pull for me.

        Wish I'd known I could've opened both savings and checking at the same time for only one Chex pull and still get the $50. I was waiting for a promotion to come along, and now I'll get a second Chex hit. I've opened up roughly 10 bank accounts over the past year and I don't want to end up with negative remarks on my report.

  • Chuck - Care to share your recent data point about whether Alliant does hard or soft pulls for new members? All throughout the main FWF thread I see everyone has had a hard pull done as part of becoming a member. I've long been debating moving to a new checking hub and haven't pulled the trigger with either Alliant or Ally because of the hard pull required.

    • The past few years, it's been soft pulls for everyone. I opened a few days ago, no hard pull.

  • I signed up for Alliant checking about 1.5 years ago when there wasn't any promotions running that I knew of. Didn't use any codes either but got $50.

    Had girlfriend sign up earlier this year. No offer used but also got $50.

    • Same here, did this about a month ago before I knew about the $50 offer. Didn't put in any code, got the $50 after I deposited some money.

      • Nicky, did you have an ACH transfer to the Alliant account to trigger the bonus?

        Terms indicate that just pulling money in won't get the bonus, needs an ACH push into the Alliant account.

        • I did, I did an ACH transfer into the account from my Chase Checking as my first transaction on the account.

      • Thanks James and Nicky for the info. I'll update the post to reflect this.

        Based on this, there's no need to swallow two Chex inquires, just open the checking account right away at the time of signing up with Alliant.

  • I have a savings account with them and asked about the "inactivity fee" and this is what they told me:

    "The Inactivity Fee is applied if there is no deposits or withdrawals made with a Savings Account within one year. In the event an account remains inactive for 3-5 years (depending on the state) the account will be considered dormant. The funds in a dormant account are required to be forwarded to the state of IL, which would then be forwarded to the state you reside. The Dorman Account Fee would be applied at the time the funds are forwarded to the state. Please know that Alliant will sent out multiple notices by mail if/when an account is reaching dormancy."

  • Alliant has really nice checking account and literally the best ACH transfer functionality. No hold of money, no black hole, instant fund availability after mobile deposit.

    • Agree, fastest ACH there is. It's become my primary "hub" bank, beating out Ally.

      • Fastest ACH for push or pull or both? If I wanted to transfer money from Ally to Alliant, how would you do it?

Leave a Comment