Update 12/21/22: Rate increased to 4.5%
Update 11/17/22: Rate increased to 4.25% APY.
Offer at a glance
- Interest Rate: 3%
- Minimum Balance: $50 opening requirement
- Maximum Balance: $10,000 (balances over this earn 0.5% APY)
- Availability: Nationwide
- Direct deposit required: No
- Additional requirements: 10 debit card transactions & eStatements
- Hard/soft pull: Soft
- ChexSystems: Yes
- Credit card funding: None
- Monthly fees: None
- Insured: FDIC
The Offer
- All America Bank offers the Ultimate Rewards Checking account, this currently offers 3% APY when the following requirements are met:
- Make 10 All America Bank VISA® debit card transactions per monthly statement cycle [Read: How to meet debit card transaction requirements]
- Receive your statements electronically.
The Fine Print
- All bank account bonuses are treated as income/interest and as such you have to pay taxes on them
- Our monthly statement cycle ends on the 20th of each month. If the 20th falls on a Saturday, the cycle will end on Friday the 19th. If the 20th falls on a Sunday, the cycle will end on Monday the 21st. There are no rollover transactions.
- Qualifying VISA debit card sales transactions include each time you use your VISA debit card to make a purchase from a vendor or merchant. These transactions must post and clear your account during the payment cycle. ATM and ACH transactions do not qualify.
Avoiding Fees
This account doesn’t have any monthly fees to worry about.
Rate History
- 1/23/19: Rate increased to 3% APY
- 11/17/18: Rate increased to 2.75%
Our Verdict
This account is in an interesting spot, most rewards checking accounts offer a much higher APY (up to 5%) but they also require a direct deposit or have other difficult to meet requirements. This account is only slightly above the best rate you can get with a basic savings account, but the requirements won’t be that difficult to meet for most people (depending on how strict the debit card transaction requirement is). Personally I’d probably either invest the time into getting a higher rate, or just avoid the hassle and stick to a basic rate.
Rate is now 5.15% https://allamerica.bank/personal/banking/checking/ultimate-rewards-checking
(The max balance went up to 15K a bit ago if you want to update that in the title too)
Rate increased to 4.50%
They allow two ultimate rewards per account, so is it combined $15K or each $15K gets 4.25%, how does it link with debit card?
Here’s the full rate history:
5/21/2021: Rate decreased to 0.60% (10x 50 reloads a month is $60/yr which ends up being zero dollars at the end of the year if you’ve maxed at 10k. Closing account is necessary; any lower and you’ll be paying for having the account open.)
11/23/2020: Rate decreased to 0.70%
10/21/2020: Rate decreased to 0.80%
9/21/2020: Rate decreased to 1.00%
7/21/2020: Rate decreased to 1.10%
6/22/2020: Rate decreased to 1.35%
5/21/2020: Rate decreased to 1.60%
12/23/19: Rate decreased to 1.75%
12/20/19: Rate decreased to 2.00%
10/22/19: Rate decreased to 2.25%
6/23/19: Rate decreased to 2.40%
1/23/19: Rate increased to 3.00% APY
11/17/18: Rate increased to 2.75% APY
6/27/2022: Rate increased to 1.85% (Highest since Dec 2019.)
6/21/2022: Rate increased to 1.00%
8/23/2021: Rate decreased to 0.45%
7/25/2022: Rate increased to 2.25% (Highest since Oct 2019.)
11/17/2022: Rate increased to 4.25% AND an increase of maximum balance to $15,000. ($637.50/year)
Currently 1.1%
$10K cap makes this completely worthless, especially for the effort involved. At best you earn what, an extra $50-80 per year? Even with two players that’s $100-160 PER YEAR lol
It’s 10 debit transactions, not exactly difficult.
Rate is adjusted automatically with raises. Very much appreciated compared to the hassle with some other banks.
Got excited about this for a minute until I saw it had a maximum balance cap of 10k. Wonder if we’ll see any 3% savings accounts with no cap this year
Let me add limit to title to make it clearer
Too bad about the 10K limit. Compared to their Money Market account at 2.5%, parking 10K in this checking account means that you’ll only earn another $4.17 a month in interest, and for that you have to remember to use the card 10x a month (good luck not doing $1 Amazon charges or buying $5 coffees you normally wouldn’t).
Not worth the hassle.
Plus let’s say that your charges average $10. Those debit charges earn no cashback/points, so compared to the use of a 2% flat cashback card, you’re foregoing $2 a month on cashback, making this account (compared to their 2.5% park-it-and-do-nothing account) and the distraction of remembering to count your debit transactions only worth around $2 and change per month. Really worth it?