Offer at a glance
- Maximum bonus amount: Up to $500
- Availability: Seems anybody can join by becoming a free member of the New Mexico Wildlife Federation. Might still need to live in DC or VA
- Direct deposit required: Yes, bonus is based on your direct deposit
- Additional requirements: None
- Hard/soft pull: Hard
- ChexSystems: Unknown
- Credit card funding: Can fund up to $750 with a credit card
- Monthly fees: None
- Early account termination fee: $10, 90 days
- Household limit: None
- Expiration date: August 31st, 2017 (direct deposit must be received by September 15th)
The Offer
- Interior Federal Credit Union is offering a bonus of up to $500 when you set up a new direct deposit between July 1st and August 31st, 2017. The bonus you receive will be 5% of that first recurring direct deposit. For example if your direct deposit is $1,000 then you’d receive $50. You’d need a direct deposit of $10,000 to get the full $500 bonus.
The Fine Print
- Limited-time offer and subject to withdrawal or change at any time.
- Offer is only good for new recurring direct deposits.
- Retracted Cash reward amount is equal to 5% of the first automated deposit, up to $500 maximum award amount. An automatic direct deposit totaling at least $500 or must be received by September 15th to qualify for the cash reward.
- Direct deposits transactions are limited to: payroll, Social Security, pension and government benefits. Business checking accounts are excluded from this offer.
- The cash reward will be deposited into your Interior FCU checking account by September 22 only if the new direct deposit has been received into your Interior FCU account by September 15
- . One offer per account.
- For information on dividend rates for Interior FCU checking accounts, please visit www.interiorfcu.org. Fees may reduce earnings. Valid savings account required to open a checking account.
- All bank account bonuses are treated as income/interest and as such you have to pay taxes on them
Avoiding Fees
Their checking account has no monthly fees to worry about. There is an early account termination fee of $10 if the account is closed within 90 days.
Our Verdict
If you have a big qualifying direct deposit you can switch and if this is a soft pull to open then there is some really good value to be had here. That is a lot of IF’s though. If anybody goes for it, please share your experiences in the comments. I won’t be adding it to the best checking sign up promos until we know more.
Big thanks to reader, Curmudgeon who let us know. Learn how to find bonuses and contribute to the site here.
Useful posts regarding bank bonuses:
- A Beginners Guide To Bank Account Bonuses
- PSA: Don’t Call The Bank
- Introduction To ChexSystems
- Banks & Credit Unions That Are ChexSystems Inquiry Sensitive
- What Banks & Credit Unions Do/Don’t Pull ChexSystems?
- How To Use Our Direct Deposit Page For Bank Bonuses Page
- Common Bank Bonus Misconceptions + Why You Should Give Them A Go
- How Many Bank Accounts Can I Safely Open Within A Year For Bank Bonus Purposes?
- Affiliate Links & Bank Bonuses – We Won’t Be Using Them
- Complete List Of Ways To Close Bank Accounts At Each Bank
- Banks That Allow/Don’t Allow Out Of State Checking Applications
I finally just received the $500 bonus today after chatting with support twice over the last few weeks. Support said the bonuses don’t post until 5-7 business days after the 2nd Direct Deposit the first time I chatted with them. The second time I chatted with them today was after waiting 9 business days with no bonus. They told me the person that normally does the bonuses has been out this week. I got the vibe that they manually review and do everything. It’s likely got to be a real DD for this to work. I received the $500 into my Checking account.
I had to open both a savings and checking account with them. Direct deposit of $10K on 8/11 and then subsequent $100 DD every two weeks.
I hadn’t received the bonus as of 9/22, so I emailed support through the website on 9/25 to inquire.
I received a note back this morning and the deposit was credited yesterday. Received the full $500 bonus into my Savings account. (even though promo states bonus will appear in Checking). Makes me think it was manually put it, so it probably wouldn’t hurt to reach out if you haven’t received your bonus yet.
Wow, thats cool. Did you do an actual DD or bank transfer?
It was an actual direct deposit.
Has anyone received any bonus whatsoever from this CU? I opened acct (already being a member of NM Wildlife) on 6/28. Made a deposit of $10k from TD Ameritrade and subsequent monthly deposits ($500) due to recurring language. Come Sep 22 and for the following week, no bonus has posted. I am not in the prescribed availability area.
Well, I wonder if this bonus is going to post tomorrow like it’s supposed to. No payment is pending right now like I expected it to, though. I’ll follow up with what happens.
Any updates on this? Thank you for diving into it!
Sorry, just saw this comment. I have not received the bonus from my $10k Ally transfer on August 10th. The only thing is, I don’t know if the bonuses aren’t going to be paid out until closer to Sept 22nd anyway. Either way I’m covered, as my real employer DD will hit Sept 10th. Unfortunately, we won’t know for sure which deposit worked for the bonus because I didn’t think to either transfer a little less than $10k from Ally or make my employer DD a little less than $10k. It seems to me that they may manually review this so transfers from other banks probably wouldn’t work, though. Also, William hasn’t updated the post but it’s an Equifax hard pull to open this account. I’d say it’s worth it for $500 though.
Thanks, updated post.
Update: I decided to go ahead and do a $10k ACH push from Ally to try to trigger the bonus. It cleared this morning. The transaction shows “Deposit (my name) / C/O: (my name)”. For what it’s worth, the Ally test deposits showed up as “Deposit ALLY BANK / C/O: ALLY BANK”.
I’m not at all confident that this will trigger the bonus. I’ll still wait till Sept 1st to make DD changes with my employer just in case the bonus shows up but I’m not counting on it.
Also, my $750 initial deposit using the Citi DC card still hasn’t showed up. I sent them a SM asking about it so waiting to hear back. On Citi’s side, it showed it went through and coded as a purchase. Not sure why it still hasn’t posted to my account yet. It’s been a week and a half.
The $750 charge to Citi DoubleCash card went through and coded as purchase (also cash advance was already set to $0).
Logging into Mint this morning showed an alert for a new inquiry from this bank though. I couldn’t find where I could see the details of this so I’m not sure what bureau yet. I have an account with MyIDCare but it’s not showing up there yet.
On Mint, I even went to the Credit section but it’s not showing the inquiry details there either, at least not yet. What other resources do people use to check/see inquiries across all bureaus without having to wait months to view their credit reports?
After a quick google search (with one of those results ending up being an article from this site lol), it appears Mint uses Equifax for their scores/monitoring, so I guess they pulled Equifax…
Sorry for so many comments lol…went on CreditKarma and confirmed that they pulled Equifax.
Well, I took the plunge. I was able to opt-out of overdraft coverage. You don’t have to live in VA or DC. I live in Maryland. You only need to join the New Mexico Wildlife group or whatever it is, which costs $25. I applied with $750 into savings using my Citi DoubleCash ($750 is the max for CC). There were 4 ID questions.
My application is now in “underwriting” and I will be contacted by a credit union representative shortly. It appears this is a normal part of the process. I think there’s a decent chance I won’t get approved though. I’ve opened around 20 accounts with 15 different banks since April. 3 of them were just yesterday. I was denied from PNC yesterday due to Early Warning Services. I think the only reason I was recently approved by Elements Financial was because I already had a HSA with them.
Anyway, of course, I’ll comment with updates on what happens. Hopefully I can grab close to $500 with this!
Thanks, Kevin! Looking forward to the updates.
After I received 2 emails with links to a docusign website to e-sign some documents, I now have an account number and received a Welcome email/SM. I didn’t receive any contact/progress yesterday but the process took just a few hours once I received the first email from a representative to e-sign the first document. As mentioned before, I’ve opened 15 or so bank accounts in the last 3 months, so it appears they may not be Chex sensitive.
The welcome email also stated that my $750 charge will be processed in the next 2-3 business days. I’ll continue to update with progress.
My planned employer DD will be on Sept 10th.
Thanks, Kevin!
No problem. By the way, here are the fees: https://www.interiorfcu.org/about/fees-charges/
$10 for closing account within 90 days.
Thanks, updated post.
Looks like there’s only one type of checking account available. One of the features of that checking account is overdraft protection. I assume this means that it’s almost certainly a hard pull? From reading other comments here, it’s my understanding that you’ll get a hard pull from many banks only if you select overdraft protection.
Will, in your experience, are you aware of any banks that don’t do a hard pull getting overdraft protection? Just wondering if there’s a chance of it still being a soft pull even with overdraft protection being a non-optional feature.
I may go for this anyway. I’ve read this before but forget the exact amount…what was the amount of value you like to get from hard pulls again?
This is tempting and the bank is in Northern VA too.
My thought is to setup a recurring 10K/month ACH from Discover to the bank and see if it triggers the bonus.
On second thoughts, 10K is too large for an actual DD for me and is kinda obvious. So may be do it like 8800 to make it look like a real DD?
I know – be the DP, I want to see, but just trying to think out load..
I assume you haven’t started the process for this yet? Are you still going for it? I’m leaning heavily towards giving it a try. I get paid once per month and I make a decent amount so this is perfect for me. There’s a “shared branch” 30 min away from me in Silver Spring, MD too.
I know you have some experience with these bonuses, can you read my comment below and respond with your thoughts on it in regards to the overdraft protection? Reading that the overdraft protection is a feature of their checking accounts (seemingly no way to opt-out), I assume it’s almost certainly to be a hard pull?
Have you tried the ACH from Discover? I already have a DOIFCU account and was considering throwing 9k into it from WF or CO360 just to see what happens. Based on the fact that they ask you in the form for your DD amount, I feel like this may be a manual process on their end.
Did you try anything? I did a $10k transfer from Ally a couple of weeks ago but haven’t received a bonus. My real employer DD will hit on Sept 10th so I’m covered either way.