Finn by Chase Review – ‘Bank In An App’ + $50 Sign Up Bonus

Chase has officially launched ‘Finn by Chase‘. Currently it’s only available in the St. Louis area. For those that missed our original post on Finn, it markets itself as a bank in an app.

App Basics

• During the pilot period Finn doesn’t have any fees.
• $50 bonus
• Autosave features
• Rate your purchases
• Categorized spending
• Only available on iOS

Autosave

Finn lets you create autosave rules, it seems kind of like If This Then That. For example you could create a rule that states:

• Save $10 when I spend $100+

You can also set up regular saving (e.g $100 every week)

Rate Your Purchases

After making a purchase you can rate how that purchase makes you feel (e.g happy sad or indifferent all in emoji form of course). This data shows up in ‘trends’.

Categorized spending

App will show you what categories you’re spending money in (e.g food & drink).

$50 Bonus

They are offering a $50 bonus when you sign up. To receive the bonus you must do the following:

• Open a new Finn Checking and Finn Savings account (both accounts are opened at the same time), which is subject to approval
• Deposit $25 or more into the checking account
• Complete at least 10 qualifying transactions within 60 days of account opening

Other things to note:

• Offer expires 4/1/18.
• Offer not available to existing Chase customers with checking and savings accounts, those with fiduciary accounts, or those whose accounts have been closed within 90 days or closed with a negative balance.
• Bonus will be deposited within 10 business days of completing the requirements.
• You can receive only one new Finn account related bonus each calendar year and only one bonus per account.
• Bonuses are considered interest and will be reported on IRS Form 1099-INT (or form 1042, if applicable.)

It looks like you can get the Finn account bonus and a regular Chase checking bonus every calendar year (just keep in mind you can’t get the Finn bonus if you’ve got the Chase checking account open or if it’s been closed within 90 days). Fingers crossed they offer something more attractive than a $50 bonus, as we are used to getting $300 from Chase for their regular checking account.

Our Verdict

I almost feel like I was in the board meeting when this was created “we need some sort of app to stay relevant with the millennial crowd”. I do think there is some benefit to rating your purchases, at the end of the month if you’ve spent $500 on purchases that make you feel bad you’re probably more likely to reduce spending on those purchases in the future (unless of course they are things you need. But that’s where marking things as need vs want comes into play). Personally I don’t see why these features couldn’t have just been added as optional extras for existing Chase account holders.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments.