Promotion has now expired, you can view the current best offers here.
Offer at a glance
- Maximum bonus amount: $350 or $500 with loan
- Availability: IA, IL only [Branch locator]
- Direct deposit required: Yes, see below
- Additional requirements: See below
- Hard/soft pull: Hard pull
- ChexSystems: Unknown
- Credit card funding: Up to $2,000
- Monthly fees: None
- Early account termination fee: Unknown
- Household limit: None
- Expiration date: None
The Offer
- First State Bank Of Illinois are offering a checking bonus. Minimum opening deposit of $100 required. Bonus is broken down as follows:
- Earn up to $250 cash bonus when you have:
- Direct deposit within 60 days of account opening
- 10 debit card transactions per month within 90 days of account opening
- eStatements within 60 days of account opening
- Earn up to $350 bonus when you have all of the above and two of the following services:
- Online Banking, Mobile Banking, Bill Pay, Balance Guard Savings, Balance Guard Line Of Credit
- Earn up to $500 bonus when you qualify for the above and:
- Two of the following services: Online Banking, Mobile Banking, Bill Pay, Balance Guard Savings, Balance Guard Line Of Credit
- Consumer loan with auto payments
- Earn up to $250 cash bonus when you have:
- The bonus is actually a bit more complicated than normal, notice that up to bit? If we look at the fine print you’ll notice you actually receive a percentage of your monthly direct deposit.
- $250 bonus is 5% of your monthly direct deposit capped at $250
- $350 bonus is 10% of your monthly direct deposit capped at $350
- $500 bonus is 15% of your monthly direct deposit capped at $500
- If you’re an existing member you can also get $100 for each person you refer (they don’t get an additional bonus). Feel free to share your referral information in the comments, but also let us know if it’s a hard/soft pull and if it can be fundded with a credit card.
The Fine Print
- Direct deposit must be payroll, social security or SSI
- Incentives will be paid out within 120 days of opening
- Offer not available to existing customers or those who accounts has been closed within 90 days or closed with a negative balance
- All bank account bonuses are treated as income/interest and as such you have to pay taxes on them
Avoiding Fees
The easiest account to keep fee free will be the free checking account, this has no monthly fees to worry about. I wasn’t able to find the fee schedule so I’m unsure if there is any early account termination fee or not.
Our Verdict
If you go for this bonus, you might as well go for the $350 bonus because the only difference is that it requires you to set up two services and two of those are online banking & bill pay. I don’t really get what the minimum direct deposit requirement would be to get the full bonus does it need to be a single direct deposit of $3,500+ or do you just keep getting 10% until you hit that $350 max? If anybody knows that or whether it’s a hard/soft pull and if you can fund with a credit card then please share in the comments. At this stage it won’t be added to our best bonus page because we simply do not know enough about it.
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
View Comments (26)
Dont see credit card funding for this acct just tried.
Does this have to be done in branch?
I applied online.
Account opened and funding via my Fidelity Visa for 2k went thru. Not sure what the maximum is as it was not specified on the application. For Direct Deposit, I'll most likely use my employer, but maybe I will try something else.
Luke- Did your CC funding go through as a purchase?
Sorry for the delay, took a while to post. It did post as a purchase.
I was thinking about funding this account with a Citi Aadvantage. Will it go through as a purchase?
Can you fund with a credit card? If so, what is the funding limit? We don't have any datapoints currently but when we do they will be added here: https://www.doctorofcredit.com/does-funding-a-bank-account-with-a-credit-card-count-as-a-purchase-or-cash-advance/#First_State_Bank_Of_Illinois
According to Luke's comment above, he was able to fund with a CC for $2000 using a Fidelity Visa.
Spoke with someone in charge of online promos and was told that no promo code needs to be entered to participate in the offer.
So you can open online without issue?
Yes I was able to apply online even though I'm no where near a physical branch (150+ miles). Application is currently pending and I was able to fund my free checking account using a Fidelity Visa for $2,000 however my CC account is only showing $1 as pending.
Soft/hard pull?
I too can confirm that a hard pull is taken from Experian. My partner has a credit score of 572 (poor) and was denied an account after the hard pull.
Hard pull with Experian
Hard pull
Damn, really? With who?
Awesome, let us know if it goes through as a purchase.
The offer has no promo code or expiration date. How do we know if it is valid? Where does it say Illinois and Iowa only? When you open an account on their site, the first page states it is open to all residents of United States.
The offer is displayed on their homepage as well (and links to this PDF). I imagine you need to open in branch to qualify for the bonus but YMMV.
Spoke to a telephone banker:
- DDs do not need to be recurring
- a signle DD of 3500, for example, would get the $350 bonus
- not limited to one per household.
- she made it sound like the first two months are all they look at; if you have 3500 in DD and 10 debits times two months, you should get the promo
Going to open one for me and one for my wife and try a DD from another account with 10 Amazon reloads per account for two months.
We'll see what happens.
so it has to be a single DD of 3500? can we do like 2 or 3 or 4 DD totaling over 3500 to get the 350 bonus?
Please let us know if it's hard/soft and if you can fund with a credit card. Thanks!
So $3,500 DD needed for the $350 bonus?
Any DP on what counts as a DD?
Seen this in their online app:
Your Credit History
As part of processing your application we will request a credit report and use the information contained in it to evaluate your application.
Soft pull or hard?