CFSB 2.25% APY Reward Checking Account, up to $20k [IL, IN, TN, KY, MO]

Offer at a glance

• Interest Rate: 2.25% APY on balances up to $20k
• Additional Benefits: ATM fee refunds
• Minimum Balance: $100 to open
• Availability: IL, IN, TN, KY, MO
• Direct deposit required: No, see below
• Additional requirements: Yes, see below
• Hard/soft pull: Soft
• Credit card funding: None
• Monthly fees: None
• Insured: FDIC

The Offer

Direct Link to offer

• Community Financial Services Bank (CFSB) offers a high-interest checking account that earns 2.25% APY on balances up to $20,000 when doing qualifying actions (below)
• An additional benefit of the checking account is that domestic ATM fees incurred will be reimbursed up to a limit of $25 per cycle, when doing the qualifying actions

Balances above $20k earn an interest rate of .5% APY.

Qualifying Actions

To be eligible for the higher rate, you need to do four things each qualification cycle:

• Have at least 12 debit card purchases post and settle
• Be enrolled and receive eStatement notice
• Be enrolled and log into online banking
• Have at least one automatic payment (ACH) or direct deposit post and settle

Basically, after the initial setup, you’ll have to log into your online banking (probably once each month), make 12 debit card purchases of any amount, and have one payment or direct deposit post and settle.

Any ACH works for direct deposit so you can automate a transfer from another bank account. The other option (instead of direct deposit) is to make an “automatic payment” which probably means to pay your credit card bill on the credit card’s website, using ACH pull to pull the money out of the CFSB account.

“Monthly Qualification Cycle” means a period beginning one day prior to the first day of the current statement cycle through one day prior to the close of the current statement cycle.

If you don’t do the qualifying actions, there are still no fees at all, but the interest rate will drop to .05% APY.

The Fine Print

• Rates subject to change after account is opened
• Domestic ATM fees incurred during qualification cycle will be reimbursed up to $25 and credited to account on the last day of monthly statement cycle
• Qualifying transactions must post to and settle to the account during monthly qualification cycle
• ATM-processed transactions do not count towards qualifying debit card transactions
• Interest earned and ATM refunds in the checking account (called Kasasa Cash) are automatically transferred to the savings account (called Kasasa Saver) each statement cycle and does not compound (apparently, if you open just a checking, they’ll deposit the interest into the checking directly, but you may want to open the Saver accounts since it earns 1% interest)
• ATM receipt must be presented for reimbursement of an individual ATM fee of $5.00 or higher

Our Verdict

There are a number of rewards checking accounts; this one has a nice maximum of $20k, but the interest rate of 2.25% isn’t the best. (Previously, this account offered 3.05%, but it’s now down to 2.25%.) There is also the geographic limitation here so this won’t work for most of us.

It’s worth reading this post on which high-interest savings account to get as there are a few options that offer 5% APY with easy requirements and some 3% options; check it out to see what’s best for you. Also, check out this post for some ideas on how to meet the debit card requirements.

HT: tbradnc on Reddit