E-Trade vs. ING Direct - Online Checking Accounts that Earn Interest
64The best online checking accounts: E-Trade vs. ING Direct
The E-Trade Financial family of companies is a leading provider of financial services including trading, investing, banking and lending for retail and institutional customers. E-trade Bank, the federal savings bank and its subsidiaries offers a comprehensive horde of lending products and E-trade bank's high-yield checking account incorporates all the functions of a traditional checking account along with unlimited ATM fee refunds. The E-trade Max-Rate Checking Account, showcases a lot of attractive features for customers including an extremely high Annual Percentage Yield (APY) of 3.25%, unlimited check writing, ATM fee refunds, free quick transfers for easy and safe money movement between E-trade accounts and other financial institutions, online bill pay and a visa-branded debit card, automatic payment and balance alerts and online checking and deposit images. A minimum deposit of $100 is required to open a new account and account holders must maintain a minimum average monthly balance of $5,000 in order to avoid a $15 monthly fee. The APY offered by the Max-Rate Checking Account is more than 9 times the national average APY for checking accounts with balances of $5,000.
ING Direct, part of the ING Group, is a branchless direct bank with operations in a number of countries across the world including United Kingdom and the United States. ING Direct is regarded as the leader in the online savings account market and its major financial services in the United States include Savings (Orange Savings Account), Checking (Electric Orange), Certificates of Deposit (Orange Certificate of Deposit), Mortgages (Orange Mortgage), Home Equity Line of Credit (Orange Home Equity Line of Credit) and Mutual Funds (Orange Investment Account).
ING Direct's checking account, popularly known as the Electric Orange, provides 4% annual yield and has no minimum balance or direct deposit requirements and no monthly maintenance fees, and is entirely paperless. Customers can make online electronic payments or have ING Direct send out a check via first class mail. Electric Orange customers can choose to have a MasterCard-branded debit card for ATM withdrawals or debit payments. The various deposit options involve Automated Clearing House (ACH) transfers from a linked account at another bank, direct deposit, transfer from Orange Savings accounts as well as mailing in paper checks.
However, there are certain disadvantages in both. ING Direct requires the customer to keep a checking account at his regular bank so as to enable cash and check deposits. Transferring money between the accounts will take a considerable amount of time and there's yet another hindrance of having to set up a new online account. E-Trade's online checking account poses certain other limitations. Customers must maintain a balance of $5,000 to receive the 3.25% APY. Otherwise, they will be eligible to earn only 0.5% APY.
Nayanathara. S.
Hi-Tech Editorial Division
Satori Level 3 Commenter 3 years ago
Good stuff! Thumbs up!
You may want to check out UnivestDirect. They're an online bank that requires $100 to open, no monthly fees, no minimum balance ($1 minimum balance to earn interest) and offers an ATM card with no withdrawl surcharge (though you may still be hit at your Point of Sale and by fees from the ATM you use). Best of all? You can do checking with your account if you like - it's $20.65 for 120 checks. They also have free Online Banking, Online Bill Pay, and Aytime Online Funds Transfers free of charge. The APY is only 0.25%, but I'm thinking most of us will save that in service and transaction fees alone. For people like us - HubPages writers and people who work online generally - this kind of an account makes a good, cheap way to link our AdSense account to our PayPal accounts to get access to our money, and still be able to get at it offline as well.