PerkStreet Financial Doubles their Debit Card Rewards to 2%
PerkStreet Doubles their Debit Card Rewards Program
As of this week, PerkStreet Financial (SM) is now doubling the base rewards for non-PIN based transactions to 2% (from 1% previously). You will get 2% cash back on these transactions when your balance is $5,000 or more. If your balance is under $5,000, you will go back to 1% cash back. Not only is this unheard of amongst debit card rewards programs, but there are very few, if any, credit card providers that TRULY will give you a 2% cash back reward as a base.
What is PerkStreet Financial? A Free Checking Account with a Visa® Debit Card with Cashback Rewards
I had previously written a PerkStreet Financial review and claimed that PerkStreet was the go-to debit card rewards program around at the time. Well, they have gone and one-upped themselves with their latest cash back rewards incentives. If you are looking for a debit card with the best rewards program, to avoid annual fees on credit cards, or to simply protect yourself from spending money that you don’t have by using a debit instead of a credit card, I don’t have a better recommendation.
5% Cash Back Rewards
Also, PerkStreet is now offering 5% cash back for the rest of June and July when you:
- purchase ice cream at Ben & Jerry’s, Culver’s, Dairy Queen and Cold Stone Creamery
- make home improvement purchases at Lowe’s, Home Depot and Menard’s
- buy gas by paying at the pump
If you are taking any big summer road trips or doing any major projects around the house, this would be a huge opportunity to take some of that money back.
They will announce other seasonal opportunities to earn up to 5% throughout the year.
Other PerkStreet Financial Benefits
- Only $25 deposit to open your account
- your first box of checks are free
- no fees for using your account
- set up direct deposit with your employer
- nationwide network of 37,000 ATM’s (largest in the nation)
- FDIC insured up to $250,000 through a partnership with Bancorp Bank to offer financial services
- free online banking and bill pay
- no account minimums
Thumbs Up
Until I see a better offer, PerkStreet Financial gets my thumbs up for being the best debit cards reward program in the country. Considering that I haven’t seen one with over 0.5% cash rewards, that might be a while.
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.
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