PNC $300 Checking Bonus [AL, DC, DE, FL, GA, IL, IN, KY, MD, MI, MO, NC, NJ, NY, OH, PA, SC, VA, WI and WV]
This has been extended until March 31st, 2018. Just realized this was first posted back in July 29th of 2016, so reposting in case people haven’t seen it before.
- Maximum bonus amount: Up to $300
- Availability: AL, DC, DE, FL, GA, IL, IN, KY, MD, MI, MO, NC, NJ, NY, OH, PA, SC, VA, WI and WV
- Direct deposit required: $500-$5,000 depending on bonus
- Additional requirements: 10 debit card transactions
- Hard/soft pull: Soft
- Credit card funding: Up to $2,000 with Visa or Mastercard
- Monthly fees: $7-$25, waive-able
- Early account termination fee: $25 if closed within six months
- Household Limit: None
- Expiration date:
June 30th, 2016August 31st, 2016September 30th, 2016October 31st, 2016December 31st, 2016February 28th, 2017March 31st, 2017 June 30th, 2017September 30th, 2017December 31st, 2017March 31st, 2018June 30th, 2018
Contents
The Offer
- PNC are back and offering up to $300 in checking bonuses. All of the bonuses require at least 10 debit card transactions. How much you’ll receive depends on the account you plan to open and is broken down as follows:
- Open a Virtual Wallet Account and receive $50 with direct deposits totaling $500
- Open a Virtual Wallet with Performance Spend and receive $200 with direct deposits totaling $2,000
- Open a Virtual Wallet with Performance Select and receive $300 with direct deposits totaling $5,000
The Fine Print
- All bank account bonuses are treated as income/interest and as such you have to pay taxes on them
- You will only be considered for one reward amount, which is based on the product type you open
- Requirements must be met within 60 days of account opening
- Your checking account must remain open in order for you to receive the reward, which will be credited to the eligible account within 60-90 days after all conditions have been met and will be identified as “Credits_Web_Promos” on your monthly statement
- A qualifying Direct Deposit is defined as a recurring Direct Deposit of a paycheck, pension, Social Security or other regular monthly income electronically deposited by an employer or an outside agency
- New account will not be eligible for offer if any signer has signing authority on an existing PNC Bank consumer checking account or has closed an account within the past 90 days, or has been paid a promotional premium in the past 12 months
Avoiding Fees
Virtual Wallet $7 Monthly Fee ($50 Bonus)
You can get this fee waived if you meet any of the following:
- Average monthly balance of $500 or more
- Qualifying direct deposit of $500 or more
- Provide proof of active enrollment in a qualifying educational institution (expires 6 years after the account is enrolled in the student banking program
Virtual Wallet With Performance Spend $15 Monthly Fee ($200 Bonus)
You can get this fee waived if you meet any of the following:
- Average monthly balance of $2,000 or more
- Qualifying direct deposit of $2,000 or more
- $15,000 in linked eligible accounts
Virtual Wallet With Performance Select $25 Monthly Fee ($300 Bonus)
You can get this fee waived if you meet any of the following:
- Average monthly balance of $5,000 or more
- Qualifying direct deposits of $5,000 or more
- $25,000 in linked eligible accounts
Early Account Termination Fee
There is an early account termination fee of $25. This is charged if you close your account within 180 days. There is some evidence to suggest that they don’t actually charge this fee, but YMMV.
Our Verdict
This is a good bonus, but PNC seems to offer bonuses of up to $400 with the exact same requirements, that being said this $300 offer has now been going for a long time so maybe the $400 offer is a thing of the past. Keep in mind you can only get this bonus once every twelve months. We’ve added this bonus to our list of the top checking account offers.
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
Hat tip to reader Jay
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Is this online only?
Nope, can get a coupon and do it in branch
And are the branches usually ok signing-up people who are not residents?
Not that I know of for this offer, but happy to be proven wrong.
Mostly yes as long as you can provide your Passport ID and someone who has an account at that branch is able to introduce/vouch for you. Letter from your boss to bank manager usually works.
DH7 did not say how did open? online or in branch. Funded with Freedom recorded as transfer. That is confusing! We want it coded as purchase, not cash advance. When you open in branch and fund initial deposit with CC it may coded as CASH advance. DOC please clarify .
DH7 comment did not help me . Please be specific to be useful. Thanks!
Thank you for the hattip.
Just a heads up, the fine print for the $300 bonus says “$5,000
in qualifying MONTHLY direct deposits to your Spend account” required to avoid the $25 monthly account fee.
https://content.pncmc.com/live/pnc/personal/serviceCharges/VW_Perf_Sel/VW_Perf_Sel_ServiceChargesA.pdf
As of January 2018, it says
No Monthly Service Charge if you meet any one of the following:
so that is one way to avoid the fee, yes, but you can also leave $5k there
I received a $400 PNC bonus a few months ago in 2015. I’ve called PNC multiple times about receiving my 1099 for tax purposes, and they said I won’t get one since they don’t report bonuses/interest under $600. Does anyone have any experience or more information with this? I thought we have to report all bonuses on our tax returns?
My understanding is that you are required to report income. It does not matter if you got a 1099.
They send me 1099 for total interest payment of less than $3 every year.
Renewed. Now valid between 2/1/2016 and 3/9/2016
https://www.pnc.com/en/personal-banking/banking/checking/campaigns/checking-vw-tiered-offer.html?m=p&e=BrandLP
not sure where to put this – is anyone else having trouble getting a 1099 from PNC for bonus last year?
Wife & i both hit it for 400 but neither received bonus. Called in and they cannot verify me over the phone since my acct is now closed. They told me to go to branch. However, i live 2.5 hours from closest branch. So then they told me to send letter to their channel services.
This seems very excessive but maybe PNC does not report to IRS. I am having same problem with wells fargo but they are investigating & i had to go to branch for them too.
Mike, please see my comment a few before yours. I had same issue – PNC told me they don’t send out 1099s for under $600. They said they don’t report to IRS, but many people have advised me to include the bonus anyway as interest income on tax return.
Many organizations do not send 1099s for those receiving less than 600 from them, but you should include it in your self-reported interest income. I’ve learned this from years of doing textbook reviews for college publishers, most of which pay less than 600. That’s even worse because it’s miscellaneous taxable income (higher rate than interest income).
Data point… On 2/9, I tried online and (after entering all my secure info… grrrrr) got “Can’t verify your security, come into branch”. I went into branch on 2/10. Got my $300 bonus on 3/30. A friend wanted to go for the bonus, so today I see on the PNC site, the offer is now available 4/1 to 4/30. But when I clicked “email me a coupon”, I get “Sorry, your coupon request was not successful: A Coupon is not available for this product.” Curious if anyone else is able to get past this?.
…Anita
I got the same error as you did. Were you able to successfully fund with a CC in branch?
How to fund it with credit card after opening? Can you do it online?
I opened a virtual wallet with performance select for the $300 bonus on 1/15/16, and did a diverse set of online ACH transfers from different banks and the billpay. I never got the bonus, and I stopped into a branch the other day asking about it where I was told that I didn’t fulfill the requirements. He showed me on his workstation’s “genesis” system window where they all were clearly identifiable as “ACH” transfers not from an employer. I had him downgrade to the lowest tier of account so I can stop intervening. Obviously it’s working for some people but a word of warning that it’s obviously not guaranteed.
Cheers
Out of curiosity, did you ever receive e-mails from PNC saying they received direct deposits? I took an approach similar to the one you did — I sent ACH transfers from two different sources hoping it would increase my chances that at least one would be recognized as a direct deposit. I’ve received e-mails from PNC with the subject line “Direct Deposit Greater Than $1.00 Credited To Your Checking Account” for transfers from both Capital One 360 and Discover.
LWT, did you get the bonus? I also received that email with an ACH that I actually pulled from WF. Wondering if it will count as a DD.
Did you by any chance have a transfer from your own business account to the account as one of your ACH transfers?
No luck with Serve or Bluebird yet. Opened the $200 one on 4/13, did 4K of ACH via Serve and Bluebird in April, still no bonus. Also did the 10 debits via Square Cash if that makes a difference…maybe they need to be real debits?
I should add that the 4K I put in showed up on my statement as Direct deposit, not transfer. I did make two square cash payments into the account tho, maybe they see this as a return and aren’t counting my debits?
Just figured I’d share. Most data I’ve seen indicates a few weeks lag from requirements to bonus, but it’s been almost a month now and nothing.
Anyone here has experience with closing the account? I was looking online and could not find any information about how to go about closing the accounts. Any help is appreciated.
I was able to close an account with PNC a couple of months ago via chat. It was not a problem and I had a check within a week or so.
Thank you, that is helpful to know.
Aren’t the instructions missing the third step?
3) Make at least 10 purchases with your PNC Bank Visa® Debit Card
I think this was for the older promo. The newer promo now also asks for the 10 debit card transactions.
Sorry, missed that. Adding it in now, didn’t see they added that in this latest promo.
Any tips on what count as debit card transactions for this bonus? I added the PNC debit card to my Amazon account but it shows up as “Visa” as opposed to a “Debit Card” – so wondering if Amazon purchases would still count.
Pretty sure they have in the past, a lot of people have also said what worked for them in the comments so worth having a look there as well.
Anybody know the routing number for one of these accounts?
Note: previously with PNC, tried opening account online and it stopped me before depositing funds and instructed me to go to branch. Went to branch and banker + bank support via phone did not permit funding with CC unless it was a cash advance.
Thanks for the DP. Have you tried to let them make the cc deposit after you lower the cash advance limit?
I opened pnc account online with my US Bank vis cash+ with $500 and showed up as purchase
Funding initial deposit with CC is a scary experience because it may be counted as CASH advance, not PURCHASE. I’ve doing open and close accounts about 5 years but never tried CC. You opened ONLINE and funded with CC and showed up as PURCHASE. How long did it show up? If you go to branch or call CSR to open the account what would happen? Hope someone give us a definitive answer?
set ur cash advance limit below what you are transacting
The new promo also doesn’t require bill pay