This offer has expired, you can view the new offer here.
Offer at a glance
- Maximum bonus amount: $350
- Availability: CA only
- Direct deposit required: Yes, although online Bill Pay is included
- Additional requirements: See below
- Hard/soft pull: Soft
- Credit card funding: Up to $1,000
- Monthly fees: None, but there is a $10 joining fee
- Early account termination fee: None
- Expiration date: None listed
The Offer
- Receive up to $350 when you open a checking account with provident credit union when you enter promo code 9336. The bonus is broken up as follows:
- Receive $100 when you complete all of the following for two consecutive statement cycles:
- Perform ten debit card transactions per statement cycle (PIN or signature, ATM transactions not included)
- Have a monthly direct deposit or automatic debit/credit post to the account (includes online Bill Pay)
- Provide a valid e-mail address
- Enroll in e-Documents
- Enroll in online banking
- Receive up to an additional $250 when you enroll your new account into their round up program. Debit card purchases are rounded up to the nearest dollar and the difference is transferred from your checking account to your savings account. They match 100% of this for the first three months and then 5% per year. Super reward accounts will NOT receive this matching bonus.
- Receive $100 when you complete all of the following for two consecutive statement cycles:
The Fine Print
- Matching bonus only applies to signature transactions (e.g when you select the credit option)
- Must live in California and be over 18 years of age
- Must be a new member, considered a new member if you don’t currently hold a personal or business account with provident and haven’t held one in the last 6 months.
- One bonus per household
- You must open one of the following accounts: Super reward checking, provident checking, simply free checking or college checking
- Checking account must be funded within 60 days of account opening with a minimum deposit of $25
- If you receive a $5 bonus for setting up a savings account, they will only pay $95 on the first $100 bonus once the requirements are met
- Bonus is counted as interest and as such you must pay taxes on it
- To receive the round up bonus your checking account must be open, active and enrolled in the round up program and eStatements.
Avoiding Fees
Membership Enrollment $10
If you enroll with provident then you must pay a $10 membership enrollment fee. Although apparently it’s possible to get this waived if you apply online.
Simply Free Checking $0 monthly
Simply Free checking as the name would suggest doesn’t come with a monthly fee. This is the easiest account to keep fee free as it doesn’t have any fee.
Early Account Termination Fee $0
None of the provident checking accounts come with an early account termination fee.
Our Verdict
- Opening this account is a soft credit pull
- It’s possible to fund the initial opening amount with a credit card up to a maximum of $5,000
- Doing a Bill Pay should cause the direct deposit requirement to trigger, if that fails an ACH transfer will work
This is not a bad deal, I do live in California so I could participate in this deal but I don’t think I will. The original $100 bonus is easy to meet as it looks like an ACH transfer would count as an automatic credit, a Bill Pay should also trigger this requirement. You’ll lose $10 of this as you have to pay a $10 fee to join, leaving you with a bonus of only $90. Although some people have reported that this can easily be waived. I always try to get at least $100 per bank account bonus.
I thought the round up program would be easy to game, I was hoping that you’d be able to buy 295 $0.15 amazon gift cards to reach the $250 bonus quickly. Unfortunately only signature transactions will work and in most cases I’d much prefer to use a rewards earning credit card on those purchases. I guess you could purchase a lot of items for less than $0.50 and you’d still come out ahead but I think if you only had small charges on the account they’d probably shut you down.
I did notice that you can add dollar amounts to each transaction and up to $100 at the end of the month. If this is possible and these additional payments get the matching bonus then maxing out the $250 in a year should be pretty easy. If it’s not eligible you’d be better off going with the super rewards account which currently earns 1.71% APR.
I’m waiting for a bit more information on this offer before pulling the trigger. If I can get the membership fee waived I’ll definitely sign up due to being able to fund the account with so much using a credit card. We’ve added it to our current bank account bonuses list which is fully searchable and sortable.
Referral Program
They do have a referral program currently available where existing members can send a link to sign up their friends and both parties will receive a $25 amazon gift card. We’re unsure if this will stack will the above promotion, but we doubt it as it requires the person signing up to use a unique promotional code when they sign up – you also need to enter a promotional code when you sign up the above offer. We’ve sent them an e-mail and tweet for comment
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