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
Has anyone had any issues with this? This seems very restrictive as you and a spouse may not be able to use the same account.
ACH Notice: Effective Immediately
Please be aware Pelican State Credit Union will no longer deposit ACH credits into an account if the payee and the name of the account do not match. Any credits received will be returned as unable to locate.
IMPORTANT: To help avoid any tax refund delays, the name and account number must match exactly in order for the deposit to be credited to your account. If not, it will be returned. The person receiving the tax refund must be on the account.
Cash app 1 $ withdraws are good as POS
I can confirm that transactions via Cash App show up with the word “SIGNATURE” in the description just like it does for an Amazon gift card reload. But with Cash App, I pay myself the $1.00 instead of giving it to Amazon. Thanks for the great tip,
Alex !
Can confirm this is NOT a hard pull.
Beware – it is only 3 free withdrawals from Savings account, more than that is $5 fee per transaction. Many other fees https://www.pelicanstatecu.com/assets/files/oqE5FUbV
Charged me $30 for joining. I guess I don’t mind. Better than membership annual fee.
How was interest paid
Kaching and everyone who opened in November? Is everything fair and square for those who did tiny|amazon|cashapp|venmo|etc?
How long does it take to receive a debit card?
I m testing their Pay a person for SoFi, it might count as DD.
interest paid on time and fine Dec 1st for Nov doing Amazon. Debit card received in normal time as other banks
Great 👍
I am soooo disappointed! I kept $10,000 in my balance for the entire month of November. Then, on December 1st, all I got in interest dividends was 41 measly cents! Obviously, I did not get the 5.11% APY rate. They sent me the following email confirming that fact…
“Our records show that you did not meet the qualifications for the Kasasa account ending in xxxx in order to receive your rewards last month. No need to worry, though! There’s no penalty for not meeting the qualifications, and you can always try again this qualification cycle to earn your rewards.
Here’s how you did on your qualifications:
– MET: Have at least 1 direct deposit, online bill payment, or automatic payment (ACH) post and settle
– MET: Be enrolled and receive FREE eStatements
– NOT MET: Have at least 15 debit card purchases post and settle
– MET: Be enrolled and log into online or mobile banking”
The small payments that I made to Verizon, Comcast, the funeral home, and to my electric company were all being counted as online bill payments, not as debit card purchases.
Thanks for the update. That’s why I hate using these types of accounts when they don’t have a tracker. I’d be interested in a list of these rewards checking accounts with trackers.
I think Liberty is the only one with the tracker, in all the rest we can’t tell till interest credits. At least from what I have.
LMCU has a tracker too
Varo, Laurel Road, and HMBradley all have trackers too.
The good thing is that a lot of us post DP so if you wait 1 month to sign up you should know what works and what doesn’t for these types of accounts. I agree that I like accounts that have a tracker also.
However, the rates from Liberty & LMCU are no longer competitive.
Yes who needs 3.25% with 15 debit transactions, if we can have 4% without any requirements! I applied for All America/Redneck today 🙂
Which account is 3.25%? Liberty is 3.45% and LMCU is 3%.
All America is a great account to have. The only negative is that they only allow 6 free withdrawals per statement. It’s $5 for subsequent transfers, which is lousy.
Yes I wanted to say “who needs 3.45% with 15 debits”.
Oh no
Kaching what the heck? You did all the payments with their debit card, right? Online bill payments are totally different thing. Are you sure this is the reason? and not meeting the time transactions are posted – I think their qualification cycles end one day prior to the end of the calendar month. Try to reach to them. It must be some kind of technical glitch.
Some months ago in Union Square CU I also didn’t receive my interest, due to some kind of glitch. But I emailed them secure message and they manually added my interest the next day.
Don’t let it put you down!
I’m pretty sure that that is the reason. I never really noticed it before but those payments that I mentioned have the words “bill pay” in the transaction description. I sent them a message but they are closed on weekends. I probably won’t get a response until Monday at the earliest.
I used to use Western Vista and a debit purchase that I made once showed as “Bill Pay” instead of “Debit Purchase”. That did not count toward the requirement so I believe that
Kaching is correct. After that, I made sure to always check that on all of my accounts.
Does the Amazon reload that you did a couple of days ago show up differently on the website than all of those that you did? If so, you can look on the bright side. If I hadn’t pestered you into trying it again, you might have missed out on the interest for December also.
Yes, I realize now that your pestering was a blessing in disguise. LOL! The transaction descriptions do indeed look different…
Amazon: SIGNATURE AMAZON.COMMF1GC7ZG3 AMZN.COM/BILL WA
Comcast: WITHDRAWAL ACH COMCAST HOUSTON TYPE: BILL PAY
Verizon: WITHDRAWAL ACH VERIZON WIRELESS TYPE: BILL PAY
Funeral Home: WITHDRAWAL ACH S C I FUNERAL AN TYPE: BILL PAY
Energy Texas: WITHDRAWAL ACH DECLARATION ENER TYPE: BILL PAY
You now provided a good DP for others.
Can you add to the post that people should make sure that their debit transactions show up as “SIGNATURE” or they won’t count?
Why as “SIGNATURE” ? you mean that Kaching’s Amazon: SIGNATURE AMAZON.COMMF1GC7ZG3 AMZN.COM/BILL WA counted as POS? but why it says BILL?
We need DP from people whose POS transaction counted for requirements, how does it shows on Pelican. Please
Acid Bath and 
Phoenix Wright share how your debits showing.
Amazon : SIGNATURE AMAZON.COM0699L5HK3 AMZN.COM/BILL WA
Thank you 🙏
Correct.
done
OMG this is ridiculous and scary – debit card purchases showing as ACH withdrawals!
I have one Bill pay transaction posted, I am testing DD for SoFi and it is this: WITHDRAWAL ACH [PAYEE NAME] TYPE: BILL PAY CO [PAYEE NAME] ENTRY CLASS CODE: PPD ACH NUMBER: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX…. this is normal ACH, but why debit card purchases would show as ACH!
Have you tried opting out of PIN-less debit and running it as a credit card instead?
https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=GRRKLF5FNLF3LKUJ
But I always thought that to be considered a POS, it had to be a debit card.
If you never opted for it then it’s by default PIN-less debit. Change it to run as credit card instead by opting out of debit.
I think that
Otto meant to say to run it as “credit” rather than run it as a “credit card”. You have to read the terms of each offer but most of the accounts that I have allow “PIN” or “signature” to count for the requirements.
When I use debit cards in the store, I usually run them as “credit” so I don’t need to type in the PIN.
That is correct. My Amazon gift card reload purchases are now going through just fine. If I were to change it to credit as Otto suggests may mess things up.
No. I realize now that I made those payments by clicking on Pelican’s bill pay link. So really, I don’t have a case.
Oh well, let’s hope now in December you will get qualified and me too. I also moved $10k there just in the beginning of December but still didn’t receive my debit card, so I am also preparing for the possibility to lose my interest for the whole month.
We have troubles with mail delivery and the mail box is far far away.
I’ve received my debit card and testing transactions now – the same thing happens to my utility payments. They are WITHDRAWAL BILL PAYMENT, and I didn’t click Pelican’s bill pay link, I did them with the debit card. So it is the glitch. I will not reach to them about it of course. Just make sure not to use the same payments any more and have 15 SIGNATURE transactions.
Kaching
Thank you for that DP,
Racoonzel, I wasn’t actually very sure if I clicked on that bill pay link. It was such a long time ago. But either way, apparently, they don’t count as POS.
Do you mean they charged you $30 and that is your “share” of the CU or did they charge you a $30 fee? If the former, that is normal except it is a higher amount than most. If the latter, I don’t understand why no one brought that up yet.
$5 for “share”, $5 for joining and $20 for Association. You can see here in Membership: https://www.pelicanstatecu.com/assets/files/oqE5FUbV
There is no option to choose how much do what to donate to “for association” in application, so they can take any from $5 to $25.
And only 3 free withdrawals from Savings/Share account.
Did they take the $30 from your initial funding account or from your checking once it was funded? It’s hard to believe that they did not list those fees while you did the application. Are you sure that you didn’t miss that? It’s also unreal that they seem to just randomly pick how much to take for “Association” between $5 and $25. That’s money that you never get back, correct?
Of course it’s a donation. There is a mandatory $10 to fund your share account during the application, and they took $5 fee from it and $5 as a “share” amount. And took $20 from checking. You better don’t fund more than $10 into share to avoid withdrawal fee. I am pretty sure I didn’t see any mention of fees while applying, I usually save all the PDFs and this one wasn’t there. I don’t mind paying to become a member, in compare with other CUs where I donated, applied and still was rejected for OOS.
If/when I apply for this account I will take notice and will hopefully remember to update this post. I think I will wait until January to apply to see if it is still a good amount higher rate than others.
CC funding- up to $1,000 with only Visa and MC. Only your name on a card.
Actually it’s possible to use P2 card over the phone. I did today and may be even Amex and Disco possible to use, but I didn’t ask.
I think that I’ll wait until after the Fed meets in mid-December to see if other Rewards accounts raise their rates close to this 5.11% rate. The $10K limit, hard pull and limited info are pretty discouraging.
Per member service rep, “We do not do a hard pull on your credit when applying for a membership or checking account. We do a soft pull as a second form of identity verification. We use Equifax!” I applied and did not get HP. I always decline overdraft.
That’s good that you confirmed my suspicion with a rep. Are you going to test Amazon reloads once you receive your debit card?
Confirming- no HP, but I had to unlock my EQ. Online banking looks like at AODFCU, same template.
And it is nationwide with $5 donation!
Ps I always decline overdraft too
What’s AODFCU?
It’s a credit union. There was a big excitement about it’s 3% credit card on myfico forums and I joined, opened kasasa account with them (low rate on it now), but I wasn’t approved for their card. Still keeping them in hopes they will offer something decent in the future.
You should update this to $10K, like you have in the title.
“unfortunately it’s a lot of requirements for a maximum balance of only $7,500.”
Done
Does this account have a tracker like LMCU and Liberty do?
No tracker
Oh, CRA must mean credit reporting agency. Right? As a general rule, I always do a 24-hour temporary “thaw” on my freezes for Transunion, Equifax, Experian, and Chex immediately before I apply for a new bank account. I don’t know, however, which of those, if any, actually accessed by credit records.
🙌 yes but you would get notification from any of them if there was an inquiry. I just applied with TU unlocked and Ex, Eq locked. I was hoping they would pull TU because it’s the most useless from CRAs and I don’t have any inquiries there. But no it wasn’t pulled. And Ex didn’t notify me that it was an attempt for an inquiry. So I think they pull Eq.
May be they don’t even do HP when person’s Chex is accessible, or EWS or whatever banking report they use. You had your Chex unlocked and I never lock any of these!
They use the same application processor as one local CU we have here, and they pull EQ but only for credit cards and loans.
Was your application rejected?
So it looks like you didn’t get HP 👍
Kaching
My app was successfully submitted and went under initial review. And they are closed today, so I’ll wait till Monday. I got identity verification questions done. That would be great if there is no HP at all!
Were you approved instantly?
I applied online on October 16th. On that same day, I received an email from them that stated the following…
“To expedite your application process, please click the “Upload Here” button below to securely upload the following information to your application:
Valid driver’s license or picture ID
Current paystub, utility bill, or official billing statement from a reputable company (ie: water, electric, cell phone, credit card, etc.)”
Then, on October 19th, I got another email saying that my application was approved.
Ok thank you
Kaching I received the same email too.
Based on the 2 DP from today it appears that someone gave you wrong info and that Pelican doesn’t do a HP.
Maybe they don’t do a HP period. Only a couple of people mentioned it and they disappeared as soon as anyone questioned them about it.
Was your account approved? If so, can you follow up here after trying Amazon reloads?
Hard pull (credit inquiry) on credit reporting agency (Experian, Equifax or Transunion) 😀
HP on which credit bureau?
Would be great if it’s TU.
Does anyone know if making small payments toward a subscription service such as Comcast or toward an electricity bill satisfy the debit card payment requirement?
Yes it will count. I’ve been doing this for years 🤣