Update 9/5/23: Rate now 6.05%.
Update 10/16/22: Looks like you can just pay the $5 fee to one of the 4 organizations, making it available nationwide.
Offer at a glance
- Interest Rate: 5.11% APY
- Minimum Balance: $0
- Maximum Balance: $10,000
- Availability: Looks like you can just pay the $5 fee to one of the 4 organizations, making it available nationwide.
Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas; must pay a $5 membership fee to one of 4 organizations; otherwise, you need to reside in St. Landry or Rapides Parish or work for (or retired from) one of the partnered organizations or if immediate family member is eligible for membership. - Direct deposit required: Yes, no minimum specified
- Additional requirements: See below
- Hard/soft pull: Hard
- ChexSystems: Unknown
- Credit card funding: Up to $1,000
- Monthly fees: None
- Insured: NCUA
The Offer
- Pelican State Credit Union offers the Kasasa cash checking account. This account offers 5.11% APY on balances up to $10,000 when the following requirements are met:
- Be enrolled and receive FREE eStatements
- Be enrolled and log into online or mobile banking
- Have at least 15 debit card purchases post and settle (must post as signature)
- Have at least 1 direct deposit, online bill payment, or automatic payment (ACH) post and settle
Avoiding Fees
This account has no monthly fees to worry about
Our Verdict
The rate is good, but unfortunately it’s a lot of requirements for a maximum balance of only $10,000. Most people will be better off going with an account with a higher maximum balance/less requirements. A full list of the best high yield savings accounts can be viewed here. It also being a hard pull makes the deal even worse.
Hat tip to missjenniferd1
For those doing Cash App loads to meet the monthly debit card requirements, make sure the transactions say SIGNATURE CASH APP and not WITHDRAWAL ACH CASH APP. The transactions labeled WITHDRAWAL will not count, but those labeled SIGNATURE will.
I have no idea why some Cash App loads are labeled one way and some other the other way. P1 did 15x loads in May and all of them were labeled WITHDRAWAL, but P2 also did 15x loads in May and all of them were labeled SIGNATURE. P2 received the 6.05% interest payment and P1 did not.
Sounds like your cashapp transactions aren’t using the debit card. When you are on the screen that shows where the funding is coming from in cashapp, make sure it shows the debit card. You could delete the checking account to be sure the debit card portion is working. Once, I didn’t realize the stored debit card had expired and that happened. It didn’t tell me my card was expired.
As of 5/23, my vrz payment using debit card shows up as withdrawal and not signature. I am not sure if it will still count or not.
See my comment below.
https://www.doctorofcredit.com/ar-la-ms-tx-pelican-state-credit-union-kasasa-checking-account-5-01-apy-on-balances-up-to-7500/#comment-1845073
Thanks. I guess they made changes to vrz payment recently. Pretty sad
This is my 1st month having this account so I don’t know how it used to appear. Did it appear as “SIGNATURE” in past months?
It changed from signature to withdrawal sometime after 5/15.
I did the Fios payment on 5.12.24 and it showed up as “WITHDRAWAL BILL PAYMENT”.
I just pulled all 3 of my reports. I confirmed that there was no hard pull from Pelican on any of them.
I just logged into my Pelican account. My test Fios payment using my debit card showed up as “WITHDRAWAL BILL PAYMENT” so this will very likely not count as 1 of the 15 qualifying purchases like you and
Acid Bath implied.
Anyway, all of my other purchases have shown up as “SIGNATURE” so I will just make 16 purchases this month to make sure that I receive the higher rate for May.
Thank you for updating us with this DP, Eric. I appreciate it.
Happy to help
I have 1 last (hopefully) question for all of you. Does Pelican send you a report the beginning of the next month stating how many DDs, debit purchases, etc. that you had the previous month?
If so, I might do 1 Fios payment in May and have a total of 16 to be safe. That way, I can see if 15 or 16 show up in early-June to know for future months.
Acid,
What were the debit purchases that you were doing that used to work but later got classified as “bill pay” on Pelican’s dashboard?
I checked my email, and all it says is “your monthly statement is ready.” It does not say anything like congratulations, you did X DD’s, etc. like some other banks do.
I also checked my monthly statements, there is no area that I can find where they show you how many DDs or Debits you did for the month.
I could not find this on the Dashboard either.
I have always done Amazon debits $1.
I have both accounts, Kasasa Cash and Kasasa Cash Back.
For the Kasasa Cash Back:
I use to do the $250 spend paying my Citi CC (or Venmo), but that no longer works.
I now need to use Cash App for that and it works.
Thank you for your detailed response. I will just rely on your earlier advice that if it shows “signature” that I am good to go.
I remember seeing a comment from
Acid Bath a while ago about “bill pay” debit purchases not counting. Is this something that I need to worry about?
I am considering doing a mix of Amazon reloads, Fios payments and in-store purchases. Do you think that Fios payments will count as “bill pay” and therefore not qualify?
Is there any way to tell on the online statement what will and will not count (ie if “signature” appears we are good to go)?
Venmo works for a DD per month
CashApp works for the $250 spend per month.
Paying Citi CC does NOT work.
Amazon reloads work for the 15 debits
You can tell in real time on the online portal what does or does not count as “signature” as each transaction that counts as a “signature” literally says “signature” on it.
Example “Signature Amazon . com XXXXX” $1.00
Hope that helps.
Eric
Thank you. It’s funny that my example is actually what I need to look for. I will make sure that “signature” appears in 15 purchases each month.
I concur with Acid Bath. The online transaction registry tells you in real time how Pelican has categorized your payments.
I make an automatic $1 payment to Verizon Wireless every month. It shows up in the online register as “WITHDRAWAL ACH VERIZON WIRELESS TYPE: BILL PAY CO: VERIZON.”
So, in answer to your question, I think your payment toward Fios will qualify as an online bill payment, but it won’t count toward the 15 debit card purchases that are required.
Is the “automatic $1 payment to Verizon Wireless” pulled from your Pelican checking account (using the routing info) or is it actually charged to your Pelican debit card?
In my case, the payments to Verizon come directly from my checking account using ACH routing info, not through my debit card.
That’s probably why it doesn’t count as you aren’t using your debit card to pay the bill. I will probably do a test payment to see if it codes as “signature”.
If you are using the Bill Pay function on the Pelican site, I don’t think there is an option to use your debit card numbers to pay for bills.
You could go into the Verizon site and pay their bill from there using your Pelican debit card but then you won’t qualify for Verizon’s $10 monthly discount for automatic payments. The $10 discount works only for direct ACH payments. Payments via debit card or credit card do not qualify for the discount.
Of course you could try paying other bills using the debit card but I found the idea of doing that just too cumbersome. Why not just do 15 Amazon gift card reloads in one sitting and then forget about it for the rest of the month.
I don’t lost my monthly discount by paying with my debit card as long as I leave $1+ to have removed from my linked checking account for Auto Pay.
I don’t want to have such a high Amazon balance if I can avoid it.
Eric, thanks for sharing this workaround to the 10% discount rule. I am going to follow your lead using my Chase credit card so that I can get the mileage points.
I hope that you didn’t do that yet. Using a credit card will get rid of your Auto Pay discount. If you use a debit card, the Auto Pay discount should stay on.
However, several times, my Auto Pay discount did go away. Each time, I was able to chat with a rep and get the Auto Pay discount put back on. It’s a real pain though.
BTW, you meant “$10” and not “10%” for the Auto Pay discount, correct?
Actually, I did use the credit card already to pay my bill, leaving a balance of about $3 to be auto-paid by my checking account. I’ll let you know next month if I’ve lost that discount. And, yes, I meant $10, not 10%,
You either have bad luck or good luck that I just happened to not check my emails for the past 2 days. That’s why I didn’t see your comment until today.
Anyway, the 1 time that I attempted to use a credit card, there was a clear warning that I would lose my Auto Pay discount if I proceeded. Did you not get that warning? If not, you will have a solid case for at least a one time courtesy.
I don’t recall seeing any such warning.
I’m glad to help.
BTW, I just looked back and noticed that you are paying Verizon Wireless. Maybe they have a more lax policy than Fios with regard to this.
I have some updates/corrections to report.
You have $1K in credit card funding but it is actually $1015 that is allowed. Technically, it’s $1020 for those of us that needed to pay $5 to an association to qualify for membership. $1015 is allowed on the app and then Pelican charged an extra $5 for the association fee.
You have down that there is a hard pull but I was not notified by email that there was a hard pull. For comparison’s sake, I applied for a CSR through the link that I posted on DoC earlier this morning and I received an email from Experian that there was a pull.
You might want to add a note that they approve applicants with their Chex frozen. I would think that would be beneficial to a lot of readers.
Pelican charged my card for $1020 but I only ended up with $1005 in cash in my accounts. $5 went toward the association donation. $5 went toward my “share” of the CU. Those are both expected.
I found out from them that there is another $5 one time fee to join the CU. You might want to add info about that 2nd $5 fee. It didn’t bother me one bit as I made more than that on the credit card funding alone but it might deter some people.
This is not really an update or correction but I also wanted to note that they have excellent CS. They replied to my inquiry the same day about the extra $5 fee.
Now I am just waiting for my debit card to arrive but this account seems really good if they don’t lower the rate.
My debit card arrived in less than a week.
I applied earlier this week and was approved the same day with my Chex frozen. I funded using my CCR and it counted for the “online” rate.
Does Pelican’s statements run by calendar month? Were the requirements waived for the 1st statement?
The statements run by calendar months. I did not get the dividend reward for my first month because I did not meet the 15 debit card purchases requirement. I could have easily made 15 small Amazon gift card reloads, but I failed to do that during my first month.
Thank you. That works out well as I had planned to apply early next month with my Chex frozen.
Any issues with the account that would keep you from recommending that I apply?
No issues.
Statements run by calendar month but all transactions you need to qualify for the good interest rate have to post to the acct by the day BEFORE the end of the month.
Thank you for the heads up. However, I am well aware that it is best to meet the requirements for these types of accounts days before the end of the month. OnPath, which I have an account with, has an even earlier close to the period than most.
BTW, I saw you comment in the CA post. Did you end up applying? If so, what happened?
I did- soft pull experian, pulled Chex, said I’d have to come in-person to verify ID in-branch (hard to do since I’m OOS with no plans to be in the area in the next 60 days so basically a waste of my time and a Chex pull). I need to start applying with it frozen to see if I can get through, seems like the folks who did had better luck.
I did see a few people reporting a similar negative DP but I didn’t recall you being one of them. Anyway, I only saw 1 person mention getting in with their Chex frozen.
They then did not reply to my follow up question. That is never a good sign for a trusted DP.
I have never applied for an account with my Chex frozen (yet), but I wouldn’t recommend ever applying for a promo that you really want with your Chex frozen. In my opinion, it’s not worth the risk of not being able to apply again.
For this Pelican account, I’m willing to take the risk for 2 reasons. 1st of all, like I wrote earlier, someone told me that they got approved with their Chex frozen. 2nd of all, if they reject my application and don’t allow me to apply again, I won’t be upset as this account is not really that special.
That’s a good point, and why I haven’t in the past- hearing a couple successes with it frozen (meaning I either missed getting in because of Chex and/or wasted a Chex pull for no reason) is frustrating.
Depending on what happens with additional DP from now until I freeze my Chex, I might apply to CA as there won’t be much to lose.
Did you happen to use a referral from
Tikky? If so, I’m wondering if using a referral from someone that referred so many other people in the same day raised a red flag with the CU.
i did- could be part of it
It doesn’t seem many of them, if any, got completely approved till they came into branch for ID verification. So the referral wasn’t the issue. My take is that they do accept OOS but only in branch. They also had an issue with emailing expired referral offers that didn’t reflect the current promo.
What is CA?
CA stands for California.
Eric, are you referring to the California Coast Credit Union CD?
That’s the one.
Calendar month.
I opened in 2022, so not sure…that’s a long time ago.
Did not receive the high interest this past month. Didn’t do anything different. Anyone else?
Mine came thru on both the Kasasa Cash Checking and Kasasa Cash Back.
Try Cash App (Venmo and paying Citi CC no longer work) for the spending.
I used cash app and amazon as well as some local store purchases. Maybe it’s the deposit. I used Ally which worked in the past.