If you participate in any bank bonuses, you know that one of the most common requirements is that you complete a direct deposit above a certain amount to trigger the sign up bonus. Usually the fine print will state it has to be a employer payroll or government benefit. Changing which bank your employer uses might be OK if you do it once or twice, but if you start asking for it to be changed every month then your payroll department might start getting annoyed.
Thankfully, there are work arounds and lots of them. Unfortunately every bank is different. Some banks will allow any ACH transfer to trigger the bonus, whilst once banks will allow a brokerage account transfer to trigger the bonus. Some bonuses will not trigger with an ACH transfer from one bank, but they will work from another page. Awhile back I created the “List Of Methods Banks Count As Direct Deposits” page. To compile all of these different data points, I regularly update it from various difference sources.
How To Use This Page
People are often confused about how to use this page, so here is my simple guide. In my example I’m going to pretend that I’m trying to research what will trigger the direct deposit requirement for Chase bank bonuses.
1. Select the bank that’s offering the bonus. You can either scroll down and click on this or use ctrl+f to search for your bank and then click it.
2. You’ll now see “the following count as direct deposits” along with a whole heap of different names and numbers and then further down “the following don’t count as a direct deposit”. What you’re looking for is a financial institution that you have an account with. Let’s say I have Alliant, American Express Serve & Capital One 360 accounts.
3. Alliant and Capital One 360 are both listed as not working, so I know that transferring money from those accounts to Chase will not trigger the bonus. American Express is listed as working, so it should work.
4. Now I can click on the numbers next to American Express to see how old the data is. The higher the number, the newer the data. The newest data point is from March 2014. That is relatively recent so I’ll try that.
5. Success, it worked and I received my bonus. Time to go celebrate! Not so fast! That page would be more useful if others knew that American Express serve worked in December 2014, so I’ll scroll to the bottom and write in the comments section “I used American Express serve for Chase and it worked in December 2014. Thanks for this resource page”
The more people that contribute the better this page comes. I know a lot of you use it, people usually don’t report something unless it’s to say something doesn’t work. Please let me know when something does work, that way I can update the page and people can be sure that it worked more recently.
If you’re doing bank bonuses, you might also find the following pages helpful:
- Is it a soft pull or hard pull to open this checking account?
- Can I fund my new bank account with a credit card? Will it count as a cash advance?
- Best bank bonuses currently available
I’m sure this has been asked, but can I use P1 chase checking to push into P2 BOA checking without triggering any kind of fraud alert or should I fund a different P2 checking and then push into P2 BOA from there?
List Of Methods Banks Count As Direct Deposits”page is not working
If I have an ebay store and just change the bank the payouts go to, will that trigger a bonus?
Anyone getting the unable to verify your identity.
There is a fix i tried my dads cell phone number and it worked and let me open my account , fidelity gets there info from who knows were.
Try your old cell phone number or your family members cell , try everything.
What does ACH stand for?
Automatic Clearing House
Last answered comment was July 2018 not sure this is even still monitored. Does anyone know if Azlo business ACH deposits from Azlo to bonus checking bank have ever been successful direct deposits? Or Acorns transfers?
Use this page to see any DP we have: https://www.doctorofcredit.com/knowledge-base/list-methods-banks-count-direct-deposits/
Is their a limit amount on what the direct deposit from the employer has to be? I can have my employer direct deposit in my normal bank as well as my chase bank. I prefer most of my money to stay where it is. Will having $100 deposited biweekly work for the bonus?
Each bank has its own rules. For ex., I opened an account ONLINE with Fifth Third Bank. They require a total of $500 within 90 days of opening the account. So I set up two direct deposits (DD) of $251. After the second deposit. I received the $325 bonus. Then I “turned off” the DDs — my company lets me do everything online! All you have to do is follow all the rules. If you are paying self-employment taxes (my wife does for her real estate sales commissions), I would put aside 25 percent of the bank bonus. Good luck in the bank bonus “game”. Doctor of Credit counsels its readers to not go nuts on opening accounts, lest you incur maintenance fees!
Im new here and just want to clarify:
So does this just mean you do an online bank transfer from your American Express Serve account into the new Chase account you just opened and this will be counted as a direct deposit in the eyes of the Chase account?
Thanks in advance!
Great request. Please folks help the good Doctor provide more and updated data points by replying on what worked for you.
Hi thanks for the useful information I would like to the citizen banking promo. I see that chase works as a DD. How do I go about moving money from chase to citizen? I push the funds, or pull it?
Push is better