Earn Cash Back With PerkStreet Online Checking

I work for PerkStreet and I wanted to let you know that our offer is now even sweeter.

When you start the day with a Current Account Balance of $5,000 or more you'll earn 2% on all non-PIN purchases you make that day and the offer does not end after six months. Even when your balance is less than $5,000 you'll still earn 1% cash back.

On top of a great base earning rate, customers can earn up to 5% cash back in popular categories. While other banks advertise great rates in certain categories, they usually charge annual fees, cap what you can earn and pay you nothing when you shop outside of their specified categories. We don't do any of those sneaky things.

No bank gives you more debit card rewards or more free ATMs than PerkStreet.

There are several problems with this bank, so I would warn potential customers to be aware of the fine print. Although PerkStreet's website has the appearance of being clear about their policies, I found that not to be the case. These “fine print” policies seem designed to (1) make it difficult to move money out of the account, and (2) to limit the cashback that you can earn. Below are examples.

(1) They have a limit of $1500 on incoming online transfers in an entire *month*! They don't tell you about this anywhere except when you actually try to move money into your account. When I called them about it, they said that they have this restriction for new customers and I was still in my first month. After a couple more calls, I realized that they will increase this limit to $2500 after six months.

Stated reason: Security.
Suspected motive: To limit the amount of money you can spend to get cashback.

(2) They have a limit of $500 on outgoing online transfers. So, say you move $5000 into your account to get 2% cashback. You are stuck with that money with them for the rest of the month (unless you adopt a slower paper check route).

(3) They have a limit of $1500 on daily expenses and explicitly say on their website that it can be waived simply by making a phone call. I had to book two one-way international flight tickets that cost a total of over $1500. I booked these and called them to waive the limit. They refused to do so because I was still in my first month. There is no notice about waivers not being allowed in the first month anywhere. As a result, I have to now spend much more money re-booking that ticket just because PerkStreet does not allow me to spend my own money.

Stated reason: Security for new customers. They claim that all banks have spending limits on debit cards. Really? Bank of America did not.

Suspected motive: Limiting spending => limiting cashback.

(4) When I tried to circumvent the limitation in (1) above to move more money into my account using FedEx, there was another surprise! The first FedEx check takes not 1 day as stated, but about 9 days for some reason. Again, some vague security reason that is incomprehensible to rational beings is given as an explanation.

Bottomline: It is not easy to get much cashback because of their restrictive policies on what you can do with your money. And they make it harder to move money out of the account while not giving any interest on it. As for the 5% cashback, they are on such specific and tiny items that I have never been able to get 5% cashback so far.