Update 6/27/23: Rate is now 5.00% APY on Savings balances up to $100,000 when you receive $500 a month in eligible direct deposits or have a total daily balance of $5,000 or more.
Update 9/20/22: Apparently new customers do not get the 3% rate; only existing customers get it as a grandfathered benefit.
Update 7/20/22: Some One Finance customers got the following email: starting August 8, 2022, your Save Pocket and the current balance in your Auto-Save Pocket will both earn 3.00% APY. Up to $25,000.
One Finance Review
One Finance is a fintech online bank with no fees and no minimums. They are FDIC-insured through a bank partner, Coastal Community Bank, Member FDIC.
Most interestingly, they have two savings account interest rate offers:
- Get 1% APY on up to $5,000. If you have a qualifying paycheck direct deposit, the limit is $25,000.
- Get 3% APY on a separate Auto-Save account. The way it works is you designate between 1 – 10% of your paycheck to go to this account and earn the 3% interest rate. Max $1,000 per month can be added to the 3% Auto-Save account. (You can also have any purchases on the One Finance linked debit card get rounded up and deposited to the 3% account. These roundups have no limit.)
They also offer unlimited account creation which they call Pockets that you can create to separate money for various purposes and even share them with other people.
$50 Referral Bonus
Referral Terms | Referrer Terms
One Finance also has a referral program with the following bonuses:
- Both referrer and referee get a bonus of $50 when the person signing up receives a direct deposit of $250+
- You can refer a maximum of 10 people per year.
We’ve created a page where readers can share their referrals. Do not put your referral links in the comments below.
Post History
- Update
10/19/213/28/22 back again: This is now 11,250 ($112.50) on Swagbucks and 22,500 on MyPoints ($142-$150) via their Revenue Universe walls. Swagbucks link | MyPoints link You should also geta $50 direct deposit bonus offer after signing up and also (sorry, expired)$5 after first debit purchase. (ht Kris) - Update 9/7/21: Now $87.88 on Swagbucks via RevU or $102 via 15,200 MP. Hat tip to Davis.
- Update 8/10/21: Swagbucks is offering $75 for opening an account and setting up direct deposit of $100 or more. Hat tip to CT
- Update 1/13/21: There is a $50 bonus for existing users that add two recurring paycheck deposits of $250 or more to their One account from 1/1/2021 through 11:59pm PST on 3/05/2021. I assume you can’t do this if you do the referral bonus/have done the referral bonus in the past. First direct deposit must be received by 11:59pm PST on 1/31/2021.
- Update 1/1/21: Reposting as referral offer has been increased to $50.
Our Verdict
In the current interest-rate environment, even 1% APY on $25,000 is nice, though it probably wouldn’t get me to change my direct deposit. The more interesting part is the ability to get 3% APY which is terrific. It’s also a soft pull to open the account (no Chex either).
Though limited to 10% of paycheck, there’s no stated limit on how much can earn the 3%; if you have $120,000 in paychecks going to One Finance, you can max this out with $12,000/yr going to the 3% Auto-Save account. According to the current rules, that should be able to continue building year over year as you increase the balance – after 2 years you can have $24,000 earning 3%, after 3 years $36,000, etc. (Of course they can always add a limit or change the rate in the future, but for now it sounds good.)
We’ll add this to our list of Best High Yield Savings Accounts.
Thanks to readers Chris R, AA, and Trey for sending this in.
I was pleasantly surprised to see a $20 referral bonus posted to my account. Thank you to whoever used my referral link.
One just forced me to login twice. I’m pretty sure that this happened the last time that I logged in also. Do any of you have the same experience?
The reason I ask is because I have the same issue with Soarion. I’m wondering if my browser is somehow the problem.
I received the below email from One on Monday. Did any of you receive the same offer?
Try One Pay,get an extra $5
Use by Apr 30
Get an instant $5 reward when you try
contactless payments at Walmart.
I got it too. There is also 10% cash back offer at Walmart that expires 4/25.
I just logged back in and I do not see that offer so it must be targeted. I only see a 3% offer available for Walmart if I set up a $500+ monthly DD.
Do you still have an active DD going to your account? If so, that’s probably why you have that nice offer. Does it work on PIN transactions or only signature? What’s the limit?
I signed up for ONE and got my card on April 5. I think I signed up through Walmart, which should mean that I can get 10% back on a Walmart purchase in April.
I don’t see any evidence of that 10% back opportunity anywhere. Am I looking in the wrong place? Maybe I did something wrong?
For the record, they did not run Chex for me.
When you apply for ONE, do they run Chex/EWS? Are they sensitive? Does the account report to Chex?
They didn’t pull Chex or EWS when I opened my account in 2021. I doubt that has changed.
TyrannicalDuncery
Nice! Thanks. 🙂
I was able to add my external account with Plaid to OF and I created a pocket/goal with no issues but I couldn’t figure out how to set a goal amount. I want to do that before I set up the recurring transfer to the pocket/goal.
How did you “set a goal amount on a custom pocket” (the 1st requirement in the email)?
If you go to savings accounts there is an option to create new goals at the bottom. Then you can set the goal amount when creating the new goal.
Unlike the rest of you, I DO have the option to add pockets to my account on the app and the website. Unlike the rest of you, I DO NOT have the option to add goals anywhere on the app or website. There is no option to add a “target” or “goal amount” during or after I added a new pocket.
There was only an option to add a name and emoji. Due to me not being able to meet the 1st requirement of the offer, I chatted with 2 different reps (the 1st left the chat midway through) and the 2nd rep finally confirmed that I would receive the bonus if I simply successfully initiated the recurring transfer without setting a “goal amount” (since my app didn’t have that option).
I initiated the $25 recurring transfer and it’s now been almost an hour and the $5 bonus has still not posted. Based on
sg77’s DP of the $5 bonus posting “instantly”, there’s a good chance that mine will not post and I’ll have to fight for it.
I can’t believe how much time that I’ve wasted on this $5 bonus and now I might not even get it (through no fault of my own).
I wonder if you’re using an old version of the app. Mine (in Android) is version 3.31.1
Also, if I use the website, I can add a pocket, but it doesn’t show anything about a goal amount; then in the mobile app I can tap on that pocket, tap Edit, and edit the goal amount.
I just checked and you are correct. My app version is 3.29.0. It’s unreal that you thought of that and the 2 reps that I chatted with didn’t think to ask me that.
I thought that apps were supposed to update automatically but I guess that’s not the case.
Do you think that I should wait until 5 business days have passed to complain to them before updating the app? At that point, if they refuse to give me the credit, I should still have enough time to update the app and then create a new goal/pocket.
I would just update the app now and create a new goal and a new transfer (it’s just a $25 transfer, not a big deal to do another).
I updated the app, created a new goal and initiated the transfer. The $5 bonus posted immediately to the new goal. I’ll probably wait for the 2nd recurring transfer to post to each goal/pocket before cancelling them to be safe.
Thank you for your help and advice.
Open the app, click on the four dots on the bottom right, click set a new goal, name it, choose a target amount, set up a recurring transfer
Get $5 for creating a goal and making a recurring transfer of $25+ by 1/31.
Have the monthly ACH coming in tomorrow and already have the $5 in my account.
That’s interesting that it seems like I misunderstood the promo. I thought that we needed to set up a recurring $25+ transfer from our OneFinance Savings account to a new Custom pocket.
So you created the Custom pocket and then scheduled to pull $25 from an external account and that triggered the $5 bonus? Did you already have the external account linked to OneFinance?
I couldn’t figure out how to create a custom pocket so I just made a goal. Then I had the $25 come from my hub account since I don’t keep any money in this account anymore.
So you created a $25 goal on the OF app and then transferred $25 from your external account to OF initiated from your external account? If so, OF probably has early DD so that’s why they recognized it tonight instead of tomorrow.
The terms in the email say “For purposes of this promotion, a recurring transfer is a scheduled transfer created in the ONE app that repeats on a predetermined schedule (e.g. weekly)”.
I just used the ONE app to create a $25 goal (I think they treat a goal the same as a custom pocket), and in that same goal interface in the ONE app I set up a monthly recurring deposit of $25, pulling from an external bank, into the goal. The $5 bonus posted instantly.
Same. The big thing is you have to use the App to create the goal. The desktop version did not have the Goal function, or maybe I just couldn’t find it.
Now when I log into the Desktop version, it shows the Pocket and the ability to add another.
So it’s possible that the way that I interpreted it (setting up a recurring transfer of $25 from OF to the goal/custom pocket) would have also worked, correct?
I don’t think that I have any external accounts linked with OF. I guess that I will add an external account and then do exactly what you did.
Hopefully they keep on doing these small bonus offers.
It might work with a transfer from ONE to the goal. I don’t see anything in the terms about it needing to be from an external account. You could try it, and then if the bonus doesn’t post instantly, do the external account.
An annoying thing with linking external accounts at ONE, at least when I did it a while ago, is that they’d often ask me to send them a statement from the other bank. Not sure if they still do that.
It worked for me using my one checking account as the funding source.
I don’t have much money in OF so I had planned to 1st transfer money in to do it. I’ll probably just do what you did since you already confirmed that it worked.
Are you going to cancel the recurring transfer or let it pull $25 twice just in case they enforce the “recurring” part?
I’ll probably cancel it after the first transfer posts.
Best to not do it as this is in the terms: If it is determined that a customer has engaged in or plans to engage in abuse or gaming in connection with this offer, ONE reserves the right to withhold payment of the Bonus or recover the Bonus from the customer’s ONE account and that customer will be prohibited from further participation in this offer.
sg77
Exactly. That’s why I planned to let 2 $25 transfers post to the goal before cancelling it.
I set a goal of $50 so I will let it finish the 2nd transfer which is tomorrow.
I linked NFCU with PLAID tonight, no problem.
I think ONE had a glitch and transferred $25 again, the day after I set up my recurring monthly transfer; or the next transfer happened 29 days too early. (Or I accidentally did another transfer, but I don’t remember doing that.)
(i.e., $25 came out of my source account twice, and $25 was deposited into the ONE goal twice; not a big deal, but could’ve been a problem if the source account didn’t have another $25)
I’d say glitch because I had the same thing happen. I don’t think it was your accident. I set up a monthly transfer too, and it was pulled on 12/29 & 1/2 from the other bank. Luckily I had a sufficient balance or I’d be upset.
And, even though I have set the pocket/goal as “none”, and moved the money to Checking, I cannot delete the goal. The error that comes up says the “recurring transactions cancelled” is not checked off.
Seems like we are paid beta-testers for this promo.
You need to go to Cash Control and cancel the recurring transfer first. My goal was already met but it kept transferring so I had to cancel the recurring transfer.
Thank you. That worked.
5% is up to 250k not 100k as the title says.
I am unable to access One Finance’s web page. Is it just me?
Their current website is one.app and that is working for me now. And the Android app works for me.
Their old website onefinance.com isn’t working for me now.
Oh! Thanks for that. I’ve always been accessing my account via onefinance.com. I did not get the memo they’ve switched to one.app
Thanks again!
Try Bill Pay Free- and get $5.
Until December 15th, try Bill Pay free and get $5 when you pay your first bill of $25 or more. Bill Pay is always free for Direct Deposit Customers. Otherwise, it’s $3 per bill after December 15th.
Chuck
Received an email about it and saw it in the app as well.
Nice, One Finance posts the bonus within 2 days for this one.
What have you been using for direct deposit? I used Treasury Direct a while ago but I’ve long since pulled money out of this bank.
Same as you, I haven’t used the account for a while. I assume Fidelity still works?? At least for this promotion, bill pay is free before December 15th even if you do not have a direct deposit.
Easy $5 bonus, and free bill pay before Dec. 15 (after that it is not free unless you become a Direct Deposit Customer).
William Charles 
Chuck
@shawntheshawn I don’t see Chase credit cards in the bill pay search. Did you have to manually enter your payee?
No, I paid Citi, which is listed there.
Betelgeuse ㊙️