Update 8/11/25: Now 5%, up to $25,000. Updated below.
Update 8/4/22: Up to 3.50% APY, effective September 1, 2022. At that time, the debit requirement also increases from 10 to 15.
Update 7/15/22: Back up to 2%
Update 8/23/21: Rate is now 1.5% (down from 2%)
Update 9/10/19: They’ve now increased the upper limit from $15k to $20k. (ht Frito)
Offer at a glance
- Interest Rate: 3% APY
- Minimum Balance: None
- Maximum Balance: $20,000
- Availability: Nationwide
- Direct deposit required: Yes, $1,000
- Additional requirements: 10 debit card purchases and e-statements
- Hard/soft pull: Soft (1 report of hard pull)
- Credit card funding: $500
- Monthly fees: None
- Insured: NCUA
- Expiration date: None listed
The Offer
- Signature FCU Choice Checking offers 5% APY on balances up to $25,000 when meeting the qualifying activities:
- Have direct deposit totaling $500 or more into your account per month
- Enroll in Signature e-statements
- Use your debit card at least 15 times per month for purchases in person or online
The Fine Print
- Limit one account per person.
- High Yield has certain requirements that must be met: The debit card must be used at least 10 times and there must be a total of $1,000 being directly deposited into the account each month. The member must be enrolled in e-statements and can only have one Choice Checking per account. If any of the requirements are not met, the account will earn the standard checking account rate for that month.
- Balances above $15,000 earn the standard checking APY while balances below $15,000 will earn the High Yield APY.
- You can even create a personalized design on your Visa debit card to make it stand out in your wallet, and when you pay.
- No minimum balance requirement
Avoiding Fees
There aren’t any monthly fees on this account.
Geographic Availability
Signature FCU is available for all to join by enrolling into American Consumer Council for free.
“Still need another way to join? By selecting this option Signature FCU will enroll you into American Consumer Council (ACC), at no cost to you, therefore making you eligible for membership.”
Our Verdict
It seems that this will be a soft pull, has $500 in credit card funding (we still need data points on cash advance), and ACH-transfers count as direct deposit. This is another solid nationwide 3% APY option on up to $15k, similar to Evansville, LMCU, and GLCU. We’ll add this one to our list of Best High-Yield Savings Accounts.
Hat tip to Depositaccounts
Didn’t see recent DP’s on Chex – do they pull it? Are they still allowing $500 credit card funding without a cash advance fee?
would love to know the answers to these too! I had an account with them for many years, and looks like they closed it due to inactivity two months ago, I’m just finding out now. Only in America do companies insist on only notifying customers by paper mail instead of by email.. ugh.
Not bad
Do we need to reopen the account if we already opened a high-yield checking account years ago?
honestly not worth it
Why not?
OnPath 7% for the same requirement minus the DD but add in login into online banking so that’s easier than a DD. $10k limit for the account but plenty of people in that thread have more than 3 accounts so the higher limit here doesn’t matter.
They seem regional
it’s nationwide
OnPath requires $150 in debit spend per month, and forgoing 3 to 5% rewards on that works out to a cost of $54 to $90 per year.
Edit: I didn’t realize the Cashapp option, so strike my criticism
Andrews CU gives 5.5% on up to $25k with 15 transactions and only 1 deposit(any amount). I think they have a SUB now too.
Do 15 Apple Cash reloads of the $10 min, then move those funds right back over, requirements done in about 5 minutes.
What options are there for those of us not in the Apple ecosystem?
Best one is Walmart split payment. Probably could knock out the entire number of transactions with a single fruit.
does the split payment method allow you to run the same card across splits? Swipe each split or single swipe?
I’ve used the same card at least twice with each partial payment being a separate swipe.
update: tried today and there didn’t seem to be a limit on number of times to split, but store was busy so only did a few. Chip txn didn’t prompt for pin and ran as credit with the option to select the amount with each split txn.
Does Walmart split way let you enter 15 transactions and use one card?
Good to know walmart system allows. I tried to split pay with the same card twice at Office Depot but the system wouldn’t allow it. I had a friendly cashier to try several times for me but the system kicks out an error message that the same card has already been used.
Cash app
Cash app will close your account. I used cash app to load for about 2 yrs and then they closed my account without explanation. Then I used my mom’s cash app account to load but 6 months later they closed her account as well. I don’t use it for anything else so I’m pretty sure they just don’t like seeing repeated load and then transfer to bank a few months later.
You wrote “they just don’t like seeing repeated load and then transfer to bank a few months later”. Are you implying that you loaded your balance many times and then didn’t withdraw it until 3 months later?
Also, how many different debit cards did you use and how many debit loads did you do in an average month on Cash App before they closed your account?
Yeah, the first year I used 2 to 4 cards and loaded 12-16 times in total every month then sent the most of the balance to my mom’s cash app after few months. The second year I used 2-3 cards and loaded 8 to 12 times in total per month. And I pretty much let the balance sit there and transfered to my bank a few times a year.
I don’t know what’s going on with this site (seems google related). It keeps refreshing so before I finish typing here it reloads the page and I lost what I wrote. It took me 20 minutes to post the above comment. Now I had to post first then using edit to add more.
I’m not sure what you are referring to. I’ve replied to a # of comments tonight and haven’t run into any of those issues. I haven’t been too active on the site lately so maybe the problem that you experienced then was fixed.
I think the problem probably is from my end. I never had this problem with my old google phone but I broke it a couple of weeks ago so got this iPhone now. The problem started after I switched to this new phone. The site refresh/reloads itself every few minutes. And I noticed this happens mostly with doc’s site. It’s so annoying.
Why not go to the site on your PC/laptop instead of your phone? I hate using my phone for most things so I guess that’s why I haven’t run into those issues.
lol, I stopped using pc more than 15 years ago. Then pretty much stopped using laptops 10 yrs ago. Been using tablets mostly until 5,6 years ago.
I just hate the tiny screens and the tiny keyboards of tablets and smartphones. I don’t anticipate ever using a mobile device as my main device.
I wonder if transferring the funds to your mom’s account over and over factored into them closing your account. What kind of activity did she have on her account?
Maybe if you had simply pulled the funds out using an external account or used the Cash App debit card to use it up, you would have been fine.
It would be nice if more people would supply the details that happened before being shut down but I won’t hold my breath.
No, definitely not because of transferring funds to my mom’s account. Because when they closed my account I wasn’t doing many transfers. Plus after they closed my account I started to use my mom’s account to load and not transferring money anywhere other than accumulating funds then withdrawing to the bank a few times. But they closed her account as well. Btw, her account didn’t have any activity other than the loads I was doing.
Ps -someone mentioned to me before that I can open another cash app account but I never tried. I’m also pretty risk averse. Lol
#1. It’s possible that the old activity finally caught up to you and they got around to closing your account. I’ve seen something similar happen with other people with other accounts but not necessarily Cash App.
#2. Are you implying that you added debit cards with your name to your mom’s Cash App account? If so, I’m surprised that they would allow that. I would think that could have caused her account to be shut down or maybe it happened simply because she was affiliated with you. 😉
#3. Before you try to open multiple Cash App accounts, check out my comment here: #2115702 .
I agree with your #2. Yes I did add my debit card to her account and I also think that was the reason they closed her account. 😞. As far as #3, if I were to open a new cash app account it still wouldn’t be multiple because currently I don’t have any (they closed the only one I had 2 years ago).
I understand that you don’t currently have a Cash App account. However, I wanted to warn you about trying to open more if you end up getting back into the fold. 😉
BTW, my guess is that you are permanently banned but I wouldn’t mind being proven wrong.
utility bill pays- i have one biller that allows payment transactions as small as $0.50
they (andrews) specifically notes
> Debit card transactions processed by merchants and received by our credit union as Bill Payment transactions
as ineligible for txns that count towards 5.5% rate
You are correct that Andrews has cracked down and no longer allows most, if any, bill payments to count. See my comment here for how to tell if a debit transaction will count or not: #2070519 .
Paypal balance reload
Cash App
Have a link for the 5.5% offer?
Is this a regional bank?
https://www.andrewsfcu.org/Learn/Resources/Rates/Kasasa-Cash-Checking-Account-Rate
Go to the AFCU website, find the Kasasa checking account under “rates”. Kasasa checking accounts are available at other smaller financial institutions all over the US, some with even higher interest rates than AFCU today.
Not everyone can join
https://www.andrewsfcu.org/Learn/Inside-Andrews/Membership
It seems that unless you’re a military member, affiliated with the military, work for the DoD or certain employers, are a DC resident, or know someone who banks with Andrews FCU, you’re not eligible. I just went through the membership questions, and it confirmed I’m not eligible. How is it better if I can’t join, when I had no problem joining Signature FCU?
https://www.andrewsfcu.org/Learn/Inside-Andrews/Membership
You can join American Consumer Council and then proceed to become member.
Are you referring to Andrew’s or signature FCU? I think LNK was talking about joining Andrew’s which requires the affiliation to military.
Anyone can apply and select ACC as your affiliation/reason to join and Andrews will enroll you in ACC. If you keep going through the questions, the last question asks if you are a member of ACC and even has a link to a page explaining how you can join on behalf of Andrews and apply.
So effectively anyone can join Andrews. That’s why it’s better.
Stick with these guys/Signature if you want to earn less interest.
Oh ok, I didn’t know that. Personally I will not deal with Andrews again. I was a member before but didn’t use them for a while so they closed my accounts without telling me or returning my money. Now they claim they mailed me a warning letter about being dormancy 2 yrs ago but I honestly never received it. Granted mails do get lost sometimes but other banks usually tried to email or call or send letter again to ensure. My Penfed even sent my money to my state unclaimed property when they didn’t hear from me (we had very serious problems with postal service in the last few years. Some postal employee was stealing mails, that’s another story).
good intel – https://www.andrewsfcu.org/Bank/Spending/Personal-Checking
have to use promo code NEW150 when creating the account to get $150 bonus with $500 DD for ~4mo https://www.andrewsfcu.org/new150
What do you mean by SUB? And what works for Direct Deposit on Andrews CU? (i’m retired, not collecting Social Security and no job so…??)
Signup bonus, see my link above for the SUB promo terms & code. Not sure what DD counts yet, there’s a DoC post here that has details on what counts as DD
Thank you, it’s the DD that does have me wondering what I can do for the Andrews one, I already have an account with them just not for that acccount specifically because of the DD. Hoping someone could say what they used that actually worked. Thanks for the reply.
For the 5.5% account, the requirement is “At least one direct deposit or ACH transaction”. Therefore, any ACH push into Andrews or pull from Andrews will count for that requirement.
I personally send $.01 from Orion to Andrews each month and I have always received the higher rate since I started using it.
Commonwealth One FCU is essentially the same but the limit is 30k.
How do Apple Cash reloads work? When I go to click on it, it says send or request, how do I reload the balance?
edit: figured it out, you just click the little dots at the top
Might be Florida only (its unclear still), but Penair Credit Union only needs $250 monthly DD and estatements, no debit requirements for 5% up to $10,000
15 transactions with no minimum should be good to pair with another such account at a different institution.
I didn’t use it for a while because other bank has better rate. But now it is solid
https://www.signaturefcu.org/Products/Accounts/Checking.aspx
Updated, thanks
Rewards checking is now 4%.
Signature Bank has been closed by US regulators.
Signature FCU is not Signature Bank. Signature FCU has to broadcast the following message at the top of their website:
March 13, 2023 – Signature Federal Credit Union is not associated with Signature Bank of NY. SFCU does not allow cryptocurrency businesses to have accounts, nor do we invest in cryptocurrency. Please rest assured that we are well-capitalized.
I got an e-mail from Signature about a 6-month CD paying 5% that seems like the best deal around currently.. anyone else get the e-mail? it links to their main interest rate page and I do see the 5% rate on 6 month CD.. I don’t have any past experience with Signature or their CDs.. is it a good deal?
https://www.signaturefcu.org/Products/Rates/Share.aspx
Added thanks https://www.doctorofcredit.com/high-interest-savings-to-get/
I did bank ACH Transfer (received $1000 ) and paid electricity bill 15 times (all amount is less than 1 dollar). But i didn’t get interest today for September. Which one didn’t trigger interest? $1000!ACH Transfer? Or 15 times electricity bill pay?
As for debit card requirements, google pay (cash app) works??
I did a 1000 ingress ACH and 15 Cash 1 $ POS and got paid 3.4% interest in October, not exactly the 3.5%