Online Banking: 13 Choices for Higher Interest Rates and Increased Security

@KC
Comment #28. I agree with KC that you should check your local credit union.

Buy local, where it benefits your community where you are at.

@Cherie
Come to Oregon we have some great credit unions and supportive banks. They support our local high school sports, community college, hospital and other charities.

Branch mangagers are members of our chamber of commerce, rotary, lion club and local charity board members.

I second the Smarty Pig comment. While I’ve only had the account for a bit, the 3.05% is nice.

The one main item is that interest is only paid to the account every 3 months instead of monthly.

@Linear Girl

Thanks, but still no (he got out in the 80′s, so they would have to back the date up quite a ways)

One comment mentioned BankDeals in passing, but this site deserves a mention. It’s really amazing for researching online bank accounts.

http://bankdeals.blogspot.com/

In addition to the obligatory “list of highest yields”, there is an in-depth review of almost every online account available. The author takes the time to contact a live customer service rep for each bank and find out hidden details that people may not think to look for. One example that surprised me: some banks will perform a “hard pull” on your credit report – which means that query will be visible to lenders when they look at your credit report. Some do “soft pulls”, and some just look up your banking history, which is altogether separate. Just one interesting tidbit that I didn’t know before visiting BankDeals.

I have heard bad things about E-Trade. Granted that may just be coincidence.

For me personally (I am also a student), I find having a checking account within walking distance is nice. I use M&I Student Checking and am able to avoid any fees. I then just use an ING Direct Savings account to hold whatever I dont need to leave in my checking.

As for an investment account, I use Scottrade. I like them because I pay no maintenance or annual fees, just when I purchase stock. If I were you though, and you are looking at opening an IRA, I might look into Vanguard also. Scottrade also runs a promotion where if someone refers you, both the referer and referee get 3 free trades which is nice.

@Jacob (#46) Your answer to the difference between Dollar and Emigrant is the minimum. Some people are starting with less than $1000.

Danna

FNBO Direct’s online savings account does have an ATM card. They aren’t really very clear about the fees associated with using it, but I certainly do have an ATM card.

“Online Payment Account” is the checking account from HSBC Direct allows up to 3 reimbursements for ATM fees per statement cycle, and the money is credited back to your account at a certain point during the month (I can’t remember if it’s at the beginning of the statement cycle or on the first of the month or what … but it’s not the very next day like some banks do). “Online Savings Account” from HSBC Direct does NOT offer the reimbursements so you’d have to use HSBC’s ATM to avoid incurring fees. ING Direct also does NOT offer ATM reimbursements but the ATM’s are free as long as you stay within the AllPoint Network. Fidelity’s mySmart account offers unlimited ATM reimbursements and the credit to your account is made the very next day.

Other notes regarding HSBC Direct… I did go into a branch once to ask about whether I could do a wire transfer, and I was told by the branch manager that they couldn’t service my account there. (So yes it is true that it is 100% online-only except for ATM but I knew that when I signed up so that was fine.) I was told that it might still be possible to do a wire transfer but I had to send some request by fax and it seemed like it was rather nonstandard so I didn’t want to chance it at the time and I used Fidelity for the wire transfer instead (which went relatively smoothly, by the way).

Note: Just for clarification, I am indeed referring to Fidelity brokerage and NOT the bank previously known as Fidelity Federal (now NationalCity/PNC).

The HSBC Direct ATM card doesn’t charge any fees and in fact reimburses you for at least some “foreign” ATM fees, so that your access to your account via ATM is truly fee-free (no fee from them, no “surcharge” from the other bank’s ATM). Note that I haven’t read their policy, so I don’t know what kind of limitations there may be, but that’s been my experience with my very occasional cash withdrawals from my account.

…Okay, I just read the posts above saying there’s no reimbursement of foreign ATM surcharges for the Online Savings Account, but I went and looked at my own account history and I didn’t imagine it; there are clearly identified reimbursals for foreign ATM surcharges. Maybe they changed the policy and I’m grandfathered in? I don’t know. I have a decent balance, but nothing I’d think was so hefty as to put me into another tier of service.

I have opend an account with Ally, it worked out fine. I also have ING and love its setup. I filled out a feedback form on Ally and suggested they do some things like ING Not only the sub accounts but the display of daily interest, YTD interest and last years interest on the account page.
Hope they take those in consideration.

@Zach: I was really disappointed when HSBC dropped their rates to 1.55% but the no-ATM-fee abroad you mentioned sounds nice. I am still their customer but have moved most of my funds to Ally.

@Jacob #61. Thanks for the input. I will definetely look into your suggestions.

I love ING *so much*. However, they’ve recently changed their policy to actively block third-party aggregators (such as Wesabe and Mint.com). They state that it is a security risk, but I feel strongly that I should have control of my own financial data. (I haven’t seen anyone blog about this, though it’s been on the Wesabe forums.)

I recently opened an online checking account with Schwab (it went with the Schwab 2% cash back card I applied for), and so far I’m super impressed with them.

* You can mail checks to ING, but you have to pay the postage. Schwab provides postage-paid envelopes to mail in checks for deposit.

* With ING, you can use ATMs within a certain network without a fee. ING will never charge a fee on their end, but if you use ATMs outside of the network, the bank that owns the ATM will still charge you. Schwab, on the other hand, refunds those fees.

* ING does have the subaccounts, which Schwab doesn’t. And ING’s website is better organized. (Though they both display the interest earned so far in the month, which I like.)

I’ve gotten stellar customer service from both sites, so I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend either of them. But unless ING reverses the aggregation decision, I may be moving to Schwab, at least for my primary bank.

@Jacob: I believe ING is still supporting MS Money and Quicken Online, but since both are being discontinued (I think?) that isn’t very useful. As for Mint, they seem to find ways to work around the limitation, but it has been very on-again off-again for me. I notice that now it says on Mint that ING is only available after business hours M-F. I have accounts on both Wesabe and Mint, but after many cycles of removing and re-adding my ING account (which would make it work for one or two updates), I haven’t been able to re-add it again. Maybe I need to try after 5pm or something.

I don’t know a ton about the situation (I haven’t gotten around to calling ING myself, though it’s on my list), but here’s one of the Wesabe forum threads about it (you don’t have to be a member to read): https://www.wesabe.com/groups/4-saving-up/discussions/4141-ing-alternatives . And the blog post referenced: http://www.thinkplansave.com/2009/06/14/what-is-ing-thinking/

I use Bank of America in MA. I specify MA bec am not sure accounts in other parts of the country are the same. It is the fourth bank for this account (formerly Bank of Boston, Fleet, BayBank…). I also use Citizens for my mother and Liberty Bay Credit Union. The Bank of America account is THE BEST of the bunch esp for bill pay. I can sched payments and edit later if nec. I love the feature of being able to go into checking account and update manual checks with detail. I pay nothing bec keep certain amount of money in several accounts including savings.

A few disappointments with ING:

1) If you have both personal and business accounts you cannot transfer money between those accounts. I could do this with my Wachovia accounts.

2) If you mail in a deposit you have to pay for postage. You also have to write your customer number and account number on each of your deposited checks – they do not provide deposit slips. If the name on your check doesn’t match EXACTLY the name on your account, they will return your check. This has been a headache for me since my business and personal accounts have similar names (my name) and my clients often make checks out to both my name and my DBA.

3) Twice I have encountered problems with ING’s website where I was unable to access my account. ING sent me a short apology e-mail but would not overnight a check for me that I was unable to have sent when their website was offline.

4) Something that perhaps people don’t realize until it’s too late: with ING and other online banking if you have to send a payment to a vendor, and that vendor requires a voucher, you’re out of luck. ING will not send you a check made out to a vendor which you could then forward to that vendor with their voucher.

For all their great rates, I am now looking elsewhere.

ABOFA (American Banco of Asia) interest rates are 1.27% monthly! That is over 15,30% per year. And this is if you only have a balance of $1000. Some higher deposit amounts have higher interest rates and additional options.

For me, the BEST is American Banco of Asia. I started using ABOFA savings accounts last year. They pay interest rates on time(I selected the quarterly payment option). They have quick online support to answer my questions. I fully recommend ABOFA.