Wells Fargo Premier $2,500/$3,500 Bank or Investing Bonus (Requires $250k/$500k In Cash/Assets)

Update 4/10/24: There is another upgrade link that is for a $3,500 bonus that requires a $500,000 deposit.

Offer at a glance

• Maximum bonus amount: $2,500/$3,500
• Availability: Nationwide, branch visit required
• Direct deposit required: None
• Additional requirements: $250,000/$500,000 in deposits or investments transferred
• Hard/soft pull: Soft
• ChexSystems: Mixed reports, likely doesn’t pull
• Credit card funding: None
• Monthly fees: Avoidable
• Early account termination fee: None, don’t close account straight away please
• Household limit: None
• Expiration date: April 1, 2023 July 1st or 3rd, 2023 October 10, 2023 May 21, 2024 or June 25, 2024

The Offer

Direct Link to offer (can be used for opening new account or upgrading)| Upgrade Link | $3,500 link

• Wells Fargo is offering a $2,500 bonus when you open or upgrade a Wells Fargo Premier relationship.
  • Open a new Premier Checking account at a Wells Fargo branch with a minimum opening deposit of $25 by April 1, 2023. You must provide the bonus offer code to the banker at the time of account opening.
  • Bring $250,000 or more in new deposits to qualifying linked accounts by Day 45 and maintain at least a $250,000 balance through Day 90 after account upgrade or opening.
• There’s another link that works for a bonus of $3,500 when you transfer over $500,000.

The Fine Print

• Offer available to customers 1) upgrading an existing Wells Fargo consumer checking account to a Wells Fargo Premier Checking account, or 2) opening a new Premier Checking account.
• You must use your bonus offer code at the time of account upgrade or new Premier Checking account opening.
• Only one $2,500 bonus may be applied per upgraded account or new Premier Checking account. Limit one bonus per customer.
• You are not eligible for this offer if: You have received a bonus for opening a Wells Fargo Premier Checking account within the past 12 months or if you are a Wells Fargo employee.
• Bonus Requirements: To receive the $2,500 bonus, you must: Upgrade to a Premier Checking account or open a new Premier Checking account by April 1, 2023 AND Bring $250,000 or more in new deposits to qualifying linked accounts by Day 45 and maintain at least a $250,000 balance through Day 90 after account upgrade or opening.
• Qualifying linked accounts include (a) bank deposit account balances (checking, savings, time accounts (CDs), FDIC-insured IRAs) and (b) investment account balances (brokerage available through our brokerage affiliate Wells Fargo Advisors, and eligible foreign exchange transactions). Excludes applicable bank fiduciary and custody accounts, and annuities.
  • Wells Fargo Advisors: Brokerage products and services are offered through Wells Fargo Advisors. Wells Fargo Advisors is a trade name used by Wells Fargo Clearing Services, LLC (WFCS) and Wells Fargo Advisors Financial Network, LLC, Members SIPC, separate registered broker-dealers and non-bank affiliates of Wells Fargo & Company. Certain brokerage accounts are not eligible.
• We will deposit your bonus into your Premier Checking account within 30 days after you have met all offer requirements.
• The Premier Checking account must be open at the time we attempt to deposit any earned bonus payment. Please note that an account with a zero balance may be closed by us without prior notice, as further described in the Deposit Account Agreement.
• Interest on the Premier Checking account is compounded daily and paid monthly. The amount of interest earned is based on the daily collected balances in the account. The following Annual Percentage Yields (APYs) are accurate as of November 25, 2022. The account pays an APY of 0.25% if the balance is $0–$99,999.99 and 0.50% if the balance is $100,000 or more. Rates are variable and subject to change without notice. Fees could reduce earnings on this account.
• Offer expires April 1, 2023. However, this offer may be discontinued or changed at any time prior to the expiration date without notice.
• Offer cannot be:
  • Paid without a valid U.S. Taxpayer Identification Number (Form W-9 for U.S. persons including a resident alien). Non-resident aliens signing Form W-8 are not eligible for the offer.
  • Combined with any other consumer deposit offer (limit one bonus per customer). If your existing Wells Fargo checking account is enrolled with a bonus offer pending, this bonus will be forfeited once upgrading to a Premier Checking account for purposes of this upgrade bonus offer.
  • Reproduced, purchased, sold, transferred, or traded.
• The actions required to earn this bonus are separate and distinct from the options available to you to avoid any applicable monthly service fee for the checking account you upgraded to.
• You are responsible for any federal, state, or local taxes due on the bonus and we will report as income to the tax authorities if required by applicable law (form 1099). Consult your tax advisor.

Avoiding Fees

The Premier Checking account has a $35 monthly service fee. The fee can be avoided each fee period with $250,000 or more in statement-ending qualifying linked (a) bank deposit account balances (checking, savings, time accounts (CDs), FDIC-insured IRAs) and (b) investment account balances.

Initial monthly service fee waiver: We’ll waive the monthly service fee for each fee period ending within the first 64 days of opening.

Regarding investing: it looks like there is a $95 $49.95 (pdf)when you transfer out all of your investments and terminate your account. I suppose you can just leave there $1 indefinitely to avoid this fee (?). (See this link > “account maintenance fees”.) (Some readers say you need to leave at least $95 or maybe $125 in order to avoid the fee.)

Our Verdict

Since this offer is available for both new accounts and upgrades, the best play here would be to open a new Wells Fargo ordinary checking account online and get a $325 bonus with $1,000 direct deposit; that bonus is slated to end on February 27th. Then (after the bonus posts and before April 1), go to a Wells Fargo branch and upgrade to a Premier relationship. Then, sometime in the next 45 days, transfer over $250,000 in cash or assets and leave it there until day 90. Be sure to get yourself the email code now in case the offer gets pulled. Once you have the email code, there shouldn’t be any issue, even if the landing page gets pulled before April 1st. The fine print seems clear that you can get the Premier offer so long as you have not done a Premier checking offer in the past 12 months, even if you did a standard checking offer in the past 12 months. A reader tells us that Wells bonuses take a full 90 days to post, so the $325 won’t hit until it’s too late.

The Wells Fargo Premier checking account earns an interest rate of either .25% or .50%, depending if your balance is over $100k.

It looks like Wells Fargo has a self-directed investment option, and so I’d assume you can ACAT transfer over any ETFs (and possibly mutual funds) from another brokerage, and that would work toward the $250,000 qualifier. I’d assume you can also buy U.S. Treasuries, brokered CDs, or other safe mutual funds which would earn top interest rates as well, see our post: Utilizing Money Market Funds & Treasury Bills For Brokerage Bonuses. Some suggest WMPXX. And I believe some have reported getting confirmation that retirement investing accounts can work to meet the $250,000 requirement as well.

Let’s break down the math for those who want to do this bonus with a cash transfer and for those who want to use the Wells Fargo investment arm:

• Cash Deposit Option: deposit $250,000 in cash for around 46 days. Let’s just round it up and say you’re money will be in transit for 2 months, you’ll still be getting around 6% return for those two months, plus the regular .50% interest. That’s a solid couple percentage points above what you’d earn from a regular high interest savings account. You might get stuck with a $35 fee for the the final month after you transfer out your balances back to your regular high yield savings account and before you manage to close the account. It’s possible you can do the whole thing without getting hit with any fees, and you’ll end up with maybe ~$800 more than you’d have gotten from a bank account which earns 4.50% APY.
• Investment Deposit Option: I have no experience with Wells Fargo investing, but hopefully you can easily move over your ETF investments and easily earn the $2,500 without much work. Or you can move cash into your Wells brokerage account and buy up money market funds that will earn around the same amount as a high yield savings account. Again, you’ll net the full $2,500 bonus without any trade-offs. (Just be sure to deposit more than $250,000 of investments in case the assets lose value and your balance dips below $250k.)
  Possibly you’ll get hit with one $35 fee on your way out. And then there’s also the above-mentioned $95 $49.95 ACAT-out fee if you transfer out all of your investments.

If anyone is familiar with Wells Fargo investments, please let us know if this can work. We’ll add this to our list of Best Bank Bonuses and Best Brokerage Bonuses.

Separately, there’s also now a $525 Wells Fargo in-branch savings bonus as well. However, multiple readers heard from their banker that the $25k won’t stack with the $250k offer.

RELATED: My $2,500 Wells Fargo Branch Visit

Deal History:

• Update: Deal is extended through June 25
• Update 2/9/24: This link still works for the Upgrade offer. Anyone can do that by first opening a regular checking account online and then upgrading.
• Update 2/7/24: Deal appears to have now been pulled, before it was slated to end. Those who already generated a unique promo code offer should probably still be able to go in branch and have them apply the promotion.
• Update 1/10/24: Deal has been extended; the new accounts link works through April 1, 2024
• Update 10/11/23: Extended until January 9, 2024. 
• Update 7/5/23: Offer extended through October 10, 2023
• Update 6/23/23: Reposting for the final week before it’s slated to expire, though it might get extended further. [Another update: The upgrade link is now showing a July 3rd expiration.] Update 5/7/23: They’ve apparently reduced the outgoing account transfer fee from $95 to $49.95 (pdf). Update 4/3/23: Offer has been extended through July 1st