NetSpend itself is a prepaid debit card account that can be used for manufactured spending, but there is a savings account attached to it. If you have not had a netSpend account in the last 180 days, you can open one and take advantage of this offer. You can put up to $5000 in the savings account and earn 5% interest on it. There is nothing special about the prepaid debit card account and we are only going to use it as the money transfering tool. You can follow the simple steps below to open and fund the account.
(1) Find a $20 bonus referral link - this one is mine, but anybody who has a netSpend account should have one too) and click the link to order a netSpend Visa prepaid debit card.
(2) It takes about a week or so for the debit card to arrive. Once you have the card, go to
https://www.netspend.com to activate it and sign up for an online account.
(3) Once inside the online account, you should find the routing number and account number (treated as checking) linked to your debit card. You can use the two numbers in your external bank account to set up ACH transferring so that using your external bank account you can ACH money into or out of the netSpend debit card account. This ACH transferring will be treated as Direct Deposit.
(4) Use your external bank account to ACH $40 into your debit card account, this will trigger the $20 bonus.
(5) In order to open the attached savings account, you need to upgrade your netSpend debit card account to a premier account. It is very easy to do so because you only need to ACH $500 into your debit card account one time from your external bank account. After doing that, your debit card account will be upgraded to a premier account automatically. Because we are not going to use the debit card for shopping, we can just keep the debit card in the pay as you go plan and there is no monthly fee. Otherwise, if you put your debit card in the feeadvantage plan, you need to pay a $5 monthly fee, so don't do it.
(6) After you have a premier debit card account, you can open a savings account which is linked to your debit card account. Use your external bank to ACH $4500 into your debit card account. Then you can internally transfer the $5000 from your debit card account into your savings account. The $5000 will earn a 5% interest in your savings account.
(7) Note that if you do not have an activity in your debit card account in 90 days, netSpend will charge you a maintenance fee. But it can be easily avoided. You can schedule ACH transfers in your external bank account to automatically push $5 into your debit card account and then automatically pull $5 out of your debit card account. This will generate the needed activities.
(8) Following the same steps, you can also open an account for your spouse if you want to put in another $5000.
Now enjoy your netSpend savings account which is earning a 5% interest at this time.
