SoFi received regulatory approval to become a national bank and also rebranded their ‘SoFi Money’ to become SoFi Checking and Savings. They began nudging everyone to switch over to the new account by increasing the APY from 1% to 1.25% only for those on the new account. However, they did not extend the ATM fee waiver to the new account, and some preferred keeping the old account with the lower interest rate.
They now sent out an email indicating that legacy accounts won’t receive any interest at all beginning June 5th. After that point the option is either to keep the ATM fee waiver with no interest or to upgrade to the new account.
Hat tip to reader raekwon
Any upgrade/DD offers (ie make a DD and upgrade, get $100-$300)?
They are probably just gonna remove the ATM rebates eventually anyways.
Until they do I’m holding on.
I prefer 1 account to checking + savings as well.
The SoFi Checking account earns interest, the same as the Savings account. As far as I can tell, you can completely ignore the Savings account. (The Savings account will be opened for you automatically, but you never need to use it.)
There is a $threshold cap on interest so you may want to use the savings account as well, but otherwise right no big deal. There’s also no fee for overdraft from savings.
What threshold cap? The new SoFi Checking account says it pays 1.25% on all balances.
Not cool of sofi. Makes me think twice of continuing with them. Already looked into Enzo today.
I mean they haven’t very cool all around
Just curious – what’s your gripe with sofi? I’ve been with them a month. Got $175+$300+60+more in bonus/perks payments from them so far. I’ve actually made them my primary/hub bank. Very fast ACH pushes too. What’s your history with them? I’m curious what I need to be on the lookout for…
I’ll upgrade when I can get another $100 bonus.
I believe you can close your account and reopen the new one for the bonus.
https://www.doctorofcredit.com/sofi-checking-5000-direct-deposit-required/
When will they finally open a chain of cafes and lounges?
Does this mean if you accepted to upgrade you no longer receive ATM fees waived at all, or only lose the international ATM fees waived?
You lose both domestic and international.
I didn’t even know it was good for international atms, that is a no brainer since I travel to Mexico often
Just get the Betterment debit card that has international and domestic ATM fees waived (instantly!)
You can use something like astra.finance to keep the account refilled above a certain balance
Between this, and the stupendous ACAT transfer fees in Invest, switching out to other options. Loved the ATM rebates, but can find other places.
Sofi’s communication approach to this conversion process has been baffling — almost every email (and there are a lot of them!) rather glaringly seems to sidestep the obvious question of any negative changes. I just get pretty suspicious when email after email implores me to “just agree! it’s quick! won’t cost you anything! favorite features aren’t going anywhere!”. And now they’ve gone from happy begging to sad punishment for not yet upgrading.
Like, it’s OK if this whole process is just because they want to discontinue using the older bank structure; it’s also OK if they want to discontinue features like unlimited ATM rebates. But explain that, rather than whatever this “upgrade” process is! Instead they have this mess of a situation where I’m not sure that I understand everything that is changing and what happens if I don’t upgrade.
I’ll never switch away from free atms. And if they eliminate it, I’ll close the account.
They’ve already said all accounts will be converted in the near future.
Who even uses ATM’s anymore? I can’t remember the last time i used an ATM. There’s almost no reason to.
Are you reading this thread. Lots of people still use ATMs. And apparently enough people for Sofi to want to eliminate it.
People who need to buy weed in nonlegal states
Don’t forget cashless ATMs.
If you’re opening a new bank account in a different city, but didn’t prepare ahead of time, yeah, you might get hit for an ATM fee to get the cash for account opening funding.
this pushed me to upgrade. Will use schwab for international ATM withdrawals now
Fidelity is a good option too
+1 for Fidelity. Same as Schwab, not sure why it’s not mentioned as often.
Fidelity has a 1% foreign transaction fee
https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=345259
I never know about this. Thanks for the info. The Fidelity checking actually works better for me than Schwab since all of my investment accounts are at Fidelity.
Probably because of the lower limit? Fidelity’s daily limit is $500, but Schwab is $1000.
I was able to update my daily limit at Fidelity to $1,000 for educational purposes.
international and domestic?
both