[FL, MS, NC, SC, TN, TX, VA only] First Tennessee $150 Visa Gift Card Business Checking or Savings Promotion

Offer at a glance

Maximum bonus amount: $150 Visa gift card
Availability: Must open in-branch; Florida, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia have branches
Direct deposit required: No
Additional requirements: None
Hard/soft pull: Soft
ChexSystems: Unknown
Credit card funding: N/A since you must open in-branch
Monthly fees: None for savings
Early account termination fee: Bonus forfeit, six months
Household limit: One per company
Expiration date: ~~June 1st, 2017~~ June 30th, 2017

Contents

1 The Offer
2 The Fine Print
3 Avoiding Fees
4 Our Verdict

The Offer

Direct link to offer

First Tennesee currently has a bonus for a $150 Visa gift card if you open a Business Checking or Business Savings account (according to the fine print you can only do one of these).
- Open BizEssentials® Basic Checking with an opening deposit of $500 & get a $150 Visa gift card
- Open BizEssentials® Savings with an opening deposit of $2,500 & get $150 Visa gift card

The Fine Print

Offer Details: Offers above expire 6/1/2017.
Offers are non-transferable and cannot be combined with other offers.
Limit one gift card bonus per company.
Bonus gift card will be mailed to customer 4-6 weeks after account funding, and will be reported as income on Form 1099-INT for deposit accounts.
Checking and Savings opening deposits cannot be transferred from existing First Tennessee accounts.
All offers subject to bank approval.
Checking Offer: To receive bonus gift card, you must present a copy of the offer certificate at a financial center and open your account with a minimum opening deposit of $500. Customer agrees to maintain account in good standing for a minimum of six months.
Savings Offer: To receive bonus gift card, you must present a copy of the offer certificate at a financial center and open your account with a minimum opening deposit of $2,500.
As of 2/16/2017, the Annual Percentage Yield (APY) for BizEssentials Savings was .05% for any balance amount. APY is variable and is subject to change without notice. Customer agrees to maintain account in good standing for a minimum of six months.
FSR: For gift card, use Coupon Redemption System, Checking offer promo code CKSMBS, Savings offer promo code SMBSSV. Visa^® is not a sponsor of this promotion. The Visa^® Gift card is a prepaid card welcome everywhere in the U.S. Visa^® Debit cards are accepted.
All bank account bonuses are treated as income/interest and as such you have to pay taxes on them

Avoiding Fees

BizEssentials Checking, $7.50 Monthly Fee

This is waived if you have a minimum daily collected balance of $5,000.

BizEssentials Savings, $0 Monthly Fee

No monthly fee.

Early Account Termination Fee

The fine print states that the account must be kept open and in good standing for 6 months. We can assume that they will take the bonus back if you don’t fulfill this requirement.

Our Verdict

Savings bonus is actually better as it’s easier to avoid the monthly fee. There is no deposit requirement length for either bonus so you should be able to open the savings account with $2,500 and then withdraw it and still get the bonus and pay no monthly fee.

Technically, there is no explicit state limitation indicated on this offer, but you need to open the account in-branch, which limits its availability. For example, the only First Tennessee branch in Texas is Houston, making this uneconomical for most Texans.

How good this deal is will really depend on what is required to open the account (in terms of documents), how long opening the account takes and how close you live to a branch. Until we know the answer to this it’s hard to consider as one of the best business checking/savings bonuses.

Useful posts regarding bank bonuses: