The Ally Payback promotion offered a 1% bonus on any new funds brought into Ally, up to $1,000 back on a $100,000 deposit. Lots of us jumped on this deal, either as new Ally customers or as existing customers who added more funds to their accounts. A while back, Ally even sent out a confirmation email with exact details of how much we’ll get.
Today, January 15th, is the last day your funds are locked up. Beginning tomorrow, you are free to transfer the funds out of Ally if you so desire. The bonus will post sometime within the next month, but regardless, the funds are no longer required, just make sure to keep your account open in good standing.
What to do with the funds now?
- Take the lazy approach and leave the funds with Ally. This is actually an attractive option for another reason: Ally has some great interest rates. Specifically, their savings account is currently at 2.00% APY which is competitive, though not the best. And they also offer a no-penalty CD, currently at 2.30% APY (on balances $25k+), which is near the top rate you can get without locking up your money. Keep in mind that when you break a no-penalty CD, you need to break all the funds out of the CD. But it’s really no big deal to break it and make a new one. Ally also has a 2.85% APY 14-month CD.
- Find the best savings rate. The CIT Bank 2.45% APY rate is probably the one I’d recommend at the moment if you want to get even more than the 2.30% Ally rate. There’s also a NASB 2.53% APY option as well. We keep an updated list of Best High-Yield Savings Rates in this post.
- Lock it up in a CD. You can get up to 2.90% APY on a 12 month CD. Higher rates for longer CD’s. Check out our full list of CD rates here.
- Use your money to fund bank bonuses. Bank bonuses often have deposit requirements, and with the new liquidity of this Ally offer ending, you can shift to some of those offers you’re interested in. Check out Best Bank Bonuses in this dedicated post which is updated regularly.
Specifically, I’ll call out here a few bonuses with high deposit requirements which can make sense now:- Sapphire Banking 60,000 Ultimate Rewards points bonus with $75,000 in deposits. Funds locked up there for 90 days. You can put the funds into a money market funds like VMMXX or VSUXX which have a nice return (recently in the 2-3% range), and are considered fairly safe (though not FDIC insured – it’s an investment).
- Capital One Money Market $500 Bonus with $50,000 deposit + 2% APY interest rate. Funds locked up there for 90-100 days. The good thing is that this account regularly maintains a competitive interest rate, currently 2%.
- Citi $400 checking/savings bonus with $15,000 deposit. Funds locked up there for 60 days. Get an extra $100 by doing two direct deposits.
- Discover $150-$200 bonus with $15,000-25,000 deposit. No minimum length of deposit. This account also regularly has a competitive interest rate, currently 2.10%.
Personally, I’ve done most of these bonuses making me ineligible. I’m pretty interested in the Sapphire Banking bonus, but the optimal way of doing that one is to first do a regular Chase checking/savings bonus and then upgrade – I’m not eligible for the regular bonus until next year, so we’ll see.
I’ll probably end up leaving my funds with Ally in a no-penalty CD for the time being until something better comes along.
View Comments (156)
I took the semi-lazy approach as I didn't see a way to cash out online and assumed I'd have to call in. Just re-examined this post tonight and decided to online chat to ask them how to early withdraw. They gave me instructions so I thought I'd share.
Once logged in, click on "More" at the top and then click "Manage CD's" and then click "Early Withdrawal" on the left. It showed my balance with the accrued interest and had options to do an online transfer back to my funding bank or check. My funding bank was Popular Bank - 2.36% APY, so that seems to be the best option.
The online chat rep said it would take 2-3 days for the transfer.
@guest_724659 veeRob, thank you for posting this. I also had been dragging my feet and thought I'd have to deposit the money into an Ally Savings account.Your instructions were very helpful and I transferred the money back to my funding account.
No problem. @will do you want to add the instructions to the post so people will see it easier?
Since I didn't know about this one but managed to (in a small way) meet the terms anyway, it was nice to see a mystery $23 pop up in my account. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Haha, score!
You never enrolled in the promotion but got the reward anyway?
I have no recollection of it, although if there was an easy one click option to enroll I may have done it while checking my account or something. Either way, since I have no memory of it it's a nice surprise.
Where in their terms does it actually say new money has to be above a certain threshold cut off? It seems like they're just refusing to pay out on anyone who withdrew and redeposited money back even though their own T&Cs doesn't say anything about what new money is.
Got my 1% in this morning!
For those who have the no penalty CD and no other Ally account, are you opening an Ally Savings account (via SM, phone call, or online), then closing the CD (via SM or can one just transfer the money online which will close the CD?) and transferring the funds into the newly opened Ally account? Or is there another, better way of closing the CD? Having an Ally Savings account might be useful. How did everyone close their no penalty CD?
When you ask online for an early distribution from the CD, it asks you where you want the money to go.
So what I would do (if I didn't already have a savings account) is open the saving account online and then close the CD (online), sending the money to the savings account. (Of course, if you want to send the money elsewhere, it's the same process as long as you've linked that other bank to Ally.)
Shoot. am I screwed? Did not see 1k bonus posted yet! have only one CD and closed it based on this post on Jan 16, then transfer it to a new savings account.
Did you receive the confirmation e-mail around 1/16/19? Did you see the notification (1) at Ally log-in site as Darrell stated above? Please review above posts such as #707024 for CD closure issues. Seems that you are ok.
Good luck.
Thank you! just saw the notification in my ally account. Need to wait additional 30 days. "We attempted to process your cash bonus for the Payback Time promotion, however, the account scheduled to receive the bonus has been closed. Please allow an additional 30 days to reprocess your bonus to another eligible account."
Placeholder to report of Ally bonus around 5 February: date-time credited, amount as expected? Issues? Etc. Use "Reply."
Got mine, yeah!!! Full $1000 bonus plus $600 in interest for a 5.5% yield. February 5th, 3:22 p.m.
Got mine at 2:23 central. No issues. Just as expected.
Got all three ($3K total). Was out today, not sure about the exact timing. Thanks, Ally!
Wow nice, wish I would have known you could open multiple accounts, thought it was only for one.
When I log in to my account, under Notifications says :Notifications (1)
We’re excited to let you know that your cash bonus for the Payback Time promotion is processing. Your cash bonus will be deposited into your account within the next 48 hours.
Thanks, me, too. Did not noticed it until you brought it up. :-)
I use Ally for my primary checking and savings, and I opened a No Penalty CD with $100k of new money, but Ally will only give me $990, not $1000. They claim that even bills that I paid out of my checking account are considered to be withdrawing money, because my total balance fell slightly below the existing balance plus the new funds. I even transferred more money into my checking account as needed over the past few months to pay more bills, and my total balance today far exceeds my balance back in Oct and Nov. They escalated the case, but they refuse to cough up the missing $10. Obviously, $10 is nothing, but I told Ally that I would terminate my relationship with them on principle if this isn't resolved in my favor.
Paying bills are fine but the money needs to come from additional funds deposited after the promotion started (11/05).
Seems like they are keeping with the terms set out?
i agree. I made sure that I did not withdraw or bill pay one red cent between the time of the deposit and Jan 15
Agreed, I think this $10 loss is on Peter.
So for those who use Ally for checking, you're expected to not pay bills at all? My combined balance between my checking, savings, and CD never fell below $100,000. I didn't withdraw money before the promo to try to redeposit funds as new money, and I didn't withdraw money after bringing in funds for the new CD other than paying bills with my existing funds and funds added from my paycheck. The terms should be there to prevent abuse, not prevent customers who bank with Ally from using their accounts as they normally would. My bank activity would have been no different than if I didn't participate in the promotion.
I continued to use Ally for checking during the promotion period. But I made very certain that the total of checking, savings and CD was always higher than my starting balance at the beginning of the promotion.
That was the key to get the full $1000 bonus. Perhaps that should have been made clearer, but that is what the rules said.
I guess I should have watched the total balance more closely. I just think Ally is following the terms too strictly. I can understand if I started with $1000, deposited $100,000, and then used $1000 to pay bills. But in reality, I probably started with about $18,000 the day I opened the CD with $100,000 of new funds, and then in the next 2 months between paying bills and depositing more money from paychecks, bonuses, distributions, etc., I probably had $160,000 by the end of the deposit retention period.
Have no idea how a simple $100K new money (and keep it there for a period of time) would result in some much complication in your case:D
I think that Ally hard-coded the "new money" rule into their bonus system. That is, new money is defined as fund put in during the deposit period (10/8/18 - 11/5/18).
Any withdrawal during 10/8/18 - 1/15/19 will impact the amount of "new money." Any deposits out of the 10/8/18 - 11/5/18 is NOT new money.
Thus in Peter's case the $1000 BillPay will reduce the "new money" level accordingly no matter how much money he deposited after 11/5/18.
Doe that make sense? But good luck to those who are fighting to get the last dollar:-)
That's not how it worked. As long as you kept your balance (across all accounts) above what the balance was on 11/5 (again, across all accounts), you would keep your expected bonus. I moved money in and out of Ally between 11/5/18 and 1/15/19 and it did not affect the bonus. I was just careful to always have my balance above the 11/5 balance.
"My bank activity would have been no different than if I didn’t participate in the promotion."
I would disagree with this statement. Your bank activity was different, unless of course you deposit an additional $100k with Ally every month?
If you really wanted the $10, you should have followed the terms of the promo and deposited $100k + excess to cover your bill payments, which is exactly what I did.
I’m talking about my checking and savings bank activity. Those transactions would have been exactly the same regardless if the $100,000 CD was sitting there or not.
Where do you propose Ally should draw this line between someone like you who "paid $1k worth of bills" and feels entitled to his $10, vs someone else who "paid $90k worth of bills" and feels entitled to his $900?
This promo was absolutely awesome and no one should get upset if they cannot read instructions and follow them accordingly.
It's worth noting that Ally customers get Webroot antivirus for free which can be used on Windows, Mac, and Android. Pretty easy to grab a product key from http://www.ally.com/webroot
Now, if you log into your account, the new rate 2.20% is showing up.