Offer at a glance
- Maximum bonus amount: $200
- Availability: Nationwide
- Direct deposit required: Yes, $400+
- Additional requirements:
- Hard/soft pull: Soft pull
- ChexSystems: Unknown
- Credit card funding: No
- Monthly fees: Avoidable
- Early account termination fee: None
- Household limit: None
- Expiration date: 04/01/26
The Offer
- Netspend is offering a $200 bonus when you open a Netspend Prepaid Card or Netspend Debit Account and complete the following requirements:
- Activate card
- Enroll in Direct Deposit and receive Direct Deposits totaling $400 or more within 60 days of acquiring the account
The Fine Print
- To qualify for this offer, (1) you must acquire a new Netspend Prepaid Card or Netspend Debit Account, activate the Card or register the Account, and pass required identity verification between 04/01/25 and 04/01/26 and (2) enroll in Direct Deposit and receive Direct Deposits totaling $400 or more within 60 days of acquiring the account.
- The qualifying incentive credit will be applied to your account within 5 business days after the qualifying direct deposit activity.
- Limit one (1) offer per account.
- All bank account bonuses are treated as income/interest and as such you have to pay taxes on them
Avoiding Fees
You can learn more about fees by clicking here.
Our Verdict
Seems like a great deal and worth doing. Not sure this will last long. Will add this to our list of the best bank account bonuses.
Hat tip to reader ntn
Useful posts regarding bank bonuses:
- A Beginners Guide To Bank Account Bonuses
- Bank Account Quick Reference Table (Spreadsheet) (very useful for sorting bonuses by different parameters)
- 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
- Bank Bonus Posting Times
Fairly easy compared to what others had to go through. No “proof” required. One secure message and bonus deposited hours later.
7/9/25 – Opened online
7/21/25 – Funded $10
8/13/25 – Employer DD
8/22/25 – Generic Account Subscription Fee LOL! 🙁
8/25/25 – Missing $200 promotion payout
This company is a joke. Secure message sent – Asked for the photo of the offer after 5 days – Asked to wait 5 biz days – 10 biz no response – Followed up – Asked to wait another 5 days. WTF
Just jump straight into filing with the CFPB, don’t play their games.
It’s always best to try to work it out directly with the FI before filing a complaint with the CFPB or NCUA. Also, in my experience, the agency asks if we tried to work it out with the FI 1st. It will look bad if you write “no” and it’s even worse to lie and write “yes”.
P1: Work payroll. Sent secure message. Quick response: “We will escalate”
P2: Rejected my work payroll because name mismatch. Did PayPal transfer from P2’s PayPal account which does code as a direct deposit”. Sent secure message. Quick response: “Sorry Charlie, transfers don’t count.”
I threatened a CFPB complaint in the messaging system for P2.
Yesterday, first full business day, both P1 and P2 have missing $200 promo. P1 got hit with $5 account fee. P2 no account fee. Not sure why.
Hey guys just came to update. I got the $200 after sending secured message to Netspend.
They manually applied the bonus within 2 days of my reporting.
Pretty surprised actually that it did not require more work as I read some of the horror stories below.
I did real DD may be that helped.
Thank you for contacting the Corporate Office of Netspend. I’m a member of the Customer Experience Team, and I’ll be assisting you with your account concerns.
We reviewed your account and were able to confirm that you did qualify for the promotional offer. However, the offer was not applied due to a system error. We were able to manually apply the credit to your account for the offer. In addition, our team was able to correct the system error so that this does not occur in the future. Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention.
In the future, you should add quotes to a comment like this. 😉
Do not recommend. I sent the message about not getting the bonus. They instructed me to email them a screenshot of the bonus and include the reference number in the email; however, they did not provide the reference number. I called customer service, and he said there is no such promotion. CFPB filed today. Prior to this, they locked my account after they received the $400 direct deposit.
Did the $100 offer someone posted last month (after missing the $200 I naively hoped the $100 would pay out properly, it didn’t lmao). CFPB filed today. Went back and forth for about a week as they switched between their send us this, send us that directions and then straight up lies saying I don’t qualify but I now feel I have enough for my complaint.
Lol, I can’t believe anyone actually uses this bank in real life! That aside, does anyone have any suggestions on how to pull money without getting the fee? This bank is so cheesy I cannot add it an an external account to any of my legitimate banks, I wasn’t even able to use it to fund any of my sportsbook accounts.
There are a few banks that can link to them. US Bank is working for me.
They actually have an account (HEB) that is 6% interest on up to $2K with no monthly fee as long as you have a DD of any amount (I do $.01) post each month. They have other 5% accounts that could be useful in the near future if/when (when) interest rates start to plummet elsewhere.
This bank with their $5 monthly fee and processing fees for literally everything scares me, I’m taking my $200 bonus and running away from this one – even if it means turning away 6%.
I agree with you that this specific Netspend Debit account is not worth keeping for the long term due to the exorbitant $5 monthly fee that cannot be waived. As I’ve stated before that makes the actual APY earned much lower than 6%.
I only brought up the HEB 6% account to counter you writing that “[you] can’t believe anyone actually uses this bank in real life!” as I have been using Netspend for years.
The key is to use their accounts that don’t have any required fees. I don’t think that I’ve ever been charged a fee on any of my other Netspend products and I have a lot of them. 😎
See my comment here for the answer to the other part of your comment: #2115051 .
DP
7/12: opened
7/15: fake DD push (to get my money out I did 2 pushes which had a $1.95 fee each, definitely avoid – sounds like pull works for free)
8/17: got hit with $5 monthly fee
8/17: chatted with live agent who escalated my case, and I filed CFPB
8/18: paid out
8/18: connected Amex to pay off a card and empty account (worked well)
Now attempting to close the account
Overall a messy churn ($9 lost) but life gets in the way sometimes 🙂 happy to have cashed out and TY to the commenters here for the guidance
Called in to close my account (all money was transferred out and monthly fee pending, balance $-5). Rep offered to waive the current monthly fee and said as long as I don’t use the account, there would be no future monthly fee. We will see if that’s true in a month.
Note: don’t enter PIN when calling, otherwise you get stuck in the endless automated tree.