Katrina Wright would love her bank account to earn money, but the interest rates on her checking account aren’t doing much to make that happen.
“I only get 1 percent interest rate, which is not very good. It is convenient to use the checking account, but I’m not going to make any money from it,” she said.
Consumer Reports checked into some community banks and credit unions that pay much higher rates.
“Some of these checking accounts are paying 4 or even 5 percent yields. That’s higher than many savings accounts or long-term CDs,” Consumer Reports’ Greg Daugherty said.
Of course, like most great offers there are some catches.
“The rates plummet if you don’t meet the bank’s monthly requirements. Some drop to as low as .04 percent,” Daugherty said.
Some people might not like some typical requirements, such as limits on the number of debit-card purchases made in a month. Other requirements include having to pay some bills online and receiving only online statements.
There can also be limits on how much money a customer can keep in their account to earn the higher interest.
“Some of the accounts we looked at had balance limits of $25,000. Once you exceed that amount, the annual rates go down to around 1 percent,” Daugherty said.
Consumer Reports said that, considering the restrictions, high-interest checking accounts work for some people, but not for others.
“I can’t be sitting here counting, ‘Oh, I need one more transaction to get a high interest rate,’” Wright said. “People just don’t have time.”
To find a list of banks that offer high interest checking accounts and read all of the requirements, consumers can visit the websites Kasasa and CheckFinder. The banks listed on these sites carry federal deposit insurance.
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