[Expired] Northpointe $100 Bonus + 5% APY Checking Account – No Bonus Requirements – DoC Exclusive

This bonus has now expired. You can still get a $50 bonus (and $50 to charity) for using the link.

Please be patient with the Northpointe team. They’ve seen a massive increase in the number of applicants and have been putting in 10-12 hour days (as well as working the weekend) to get everybody sorted. It may take them 3-5 days to get everybody sorted, but as long as you apply for the account before Wednesday, March, 23rd you’ll receive the $100 bonus. They have awesome customer service, so just stick with it and be patient and polite as always.

• Maximum Bonus: $100
• Interest Rate: 5.00% APY
• Minimum Balance: none  ($100 initial deposit)
• Maximum Balance: up to $5,000 (beyond that the rate is .10% APY)
• Availability: Nationwide
• Direct deposit required: No
• Additional requirements: Yes, see below 
• Hard/soft pull: Soft
• Credit card funding: None
• Monthly fees:  None 
• Insured: FDIC

The Offer

Direct Link

• Open the UltimateAccount checking account at Northpointe Bank with the promotional code DOC and receive the following:
  • Receive a sign up bonus of $100 if the initial deposit is $100 or more
  • Receive an APY of 5% on balances of up to $5,000 and ATM refunds (up to $10 per month) when you complete the following requirements each statement cycle:
    • Be enrolled in eStatements
    • Use your debit card to make 15 or more purchases per month in the amount of $500 or more
    • $100 or more in direct deposits or automatic withdrawals per month

Any portion of the balance which is above $5,000 will earn an interest rate of .10%. (The first $5,000 will still earn the full 5% interest.)

The Fine Print

• New account bonus is an interest credit and will be paid within 30 days of account opening
• $100 offer is valid for the next ten days (will expire after Wednesday the 23rd of March, 2016). After that the bonus will drop down to $50 and Northpointe will donate an extra $50 to the Kids’ Food Basket (a charity they have an on going relationship with that is around 1 mile from their main building). You only need to apply before this date, it doesn’t matter when the actual application is processed.
• This offer is limited to one per household (tracked by address)
• Accounts must be kept open for at least 120 days or there is an early withdrawal penalty (forfeiture of bonus)

Funding the Account

The bank requires an initial funding of at least $100. The funding can only be done via ACH transfer from your existing checking or savings account, so be sure to have the routing/account numbers handy at the time of application. They do not allow funding with a credit or debit card.

Avoiding Fees

This checking account does not come with any monthly fees or any fees at all. There is a dormant monthly fee of $5 if the account has no activity for twelve months or more.

ATM Fee Waiver

Not only is the account fee-free, they’ll actually reimburse you for up to $10 in ATM fees charged by the ATM owner. (Northpointe themselves will never charge you any ATM fees from their end.)

This is a really nice benefit of having this account as you can always fall back on it to withdraw money at any ATM nationwide (or even internationally, perhaps) and get the fees reimbursed. Since you’ll already have $5000 in the account, you won’t have to worry about making sure the account has funds which you can withdraw.

Meeting The Debit Card Requirement

This is probably the most difficult part of getting the 5% rate, as you need to make 15 or more purchases that total $500 per month. If you put that on a credit card earning 2% cash back, you’d earn $10 per month (you’d be earning ~$20 per month from the interest, but there are other high interest accounts out there).

Meeting the Deposit/Withdrawal Requirement

The direct deposit requirement is pretty typical, but here they gave us more leeway and allowed an automatic withdrawal as well. The main goal here, apparently, is that you should actually use the account and not just park $5000 in it, so they’re okay as long as they see some regular account activity such as a direct deposit or automatic withdrawal of $100.

Based on my correspondence with the bank:

• The $100 withdrawal requirement can be fulfilled, for example, by making a $100 credit card payment, initiated by the credit card.
• Making ACH transfers from another bank account may work in many cases to fulfill the requirement of a direct deposit, but it can vary by the bank as to whether it gets coded as a direct deposit.

Making an ACH withdrawal should probably work in any case since that doesn’t require a special ‘direct deposit’ coding to qualify. Thus, it should work for you to just have an automatic transfer of $100 from your regular checking account to your Northpointe account and another transfer back. Even if the transfer to the Northpointe account would not come up as a ‘direct deposit’, the subsequent withdrawal should presumably be considered an automatic withdrawal and suffice to make you eligible for the 5% interest rate.

Our Verdict

Opening this account is worth it just for the $100 bonus, there are no requirements other than depositing at least $100 and the account doesn’t have any monthly fees to worry about either. I really look at the ability to earn 5% APY on $5,000 as an added bonus, there are other accounts out there that offer the same rate but none come with a sign up bonus remotely this good.

We’ve added this bonus to our best bank account bonus list, it’s probably between this and the Citi 50,000/40,000 offers as to what’s best – I like this one because of it’s hassle free nature. So even if you don’t usually do bank account bonuses, I’d grab this deal.

Northpointe usually offer a $50 bonus on this account and also give bloggers $50 as commission for every reader they sign up. I asked if they would instead give our readers $100 and they agreed, but as mentioned before this is only for the next ten days so the sooner you sign up the better.

We don’t have any financial relationship with Northpointe (we’ve given up our commission to give you a better bonus), I really like them as a bank as they’ve made this deal possible and Bill Clancy (Vice President, Deposit Banking at Northpointe Bank) has answered your questions before. If you have any questions you’d like answered (not about this promo) then you can ask them over here and Bill will answer these questions sometime this week.