Pelican State Credit Union Kasasa Checking Account – 5.01% APY On Balances Up To $20,000

Update 9/5/23: Rate now 6.05%.

Update 10/16/22: Looks like you can just pay the $5 fee to one of the 4 organizations, making it available nationwide.

Offer at a glance

  • Interest Rate: 5.11% APY
  • Minimum Balance: $0
  • Maximum Balance: $10,000
  • Availability:  Looks like you can just pay the $5 fee to one of the 4 organizations, making it available nationwide. Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas; must pay a $5 membership fee to one of 4 organizations; otherwise, you need to reside in St. Landry or Rapides Parish or work for (or retired from) one of the partnered organizations or if immediate family member is eligible for membership.
  • Direct deposit required: Yes, no minimum specified
  • Additional requirements: See below
  • Hard/soft pull: Hard
  • ChexSystems: Unknown
  • Credit card funding: Up to $1,000
  • Monthly fees: None
  • Insured: NCUA

The Offer

Direct link to offer

  • Pelican State Credit Union offers the Kasasa cash checking account. This account offers 5.11% APY on balances up to $10,000 when the following requirements are met:
    • Be enrolled and receive FREE eStatements
    • Be enrolled and log into online or mobile banking
    • Have at least 15 debit card purchases post and settle (must post as signature)
    • Have at least 1 direct deposit, online bill payment, or automatic payment (ACH) post and settle

Avoiding Fees

This account has no monthly fees to worry about

Our Verdict

The rate is good, but unfortunately it’s a lot of requirements for a maximum balance of only $10,000. Most  people will be better off going with an account with a higher maximum balance/less requirements. A full list of the best high yield savings accounts can be viewed here. It also being a hard pull makes the deal even worse.

Hat tip to missjenniferd1

 
    William Charles
  • On October 16, 2022, 21:55

View Comments (269)

  • CAUTION! Unauthorized FRAUD Transactions posted on my account. Debit Card Never used at high-risk locations. Their Debit card number generation is too simple and easy to guess! Anyone opened their account needs to check transactions on a daily basis!

    • Are you sure it’s not from a merchant where you used your card? One time my debit card info was stolen from USPS. The reason I know is because that’s a brand new debit card and USPS was the only place I used the card. I had to talk to the poster general about my case and the several workers got fired. Apparently there was a debit card fraud scheme going on at USPS. I will never purchase money order at USPS

        • it's probably not in the news because it's not big enough. it happened in TX. I would never do anything with money at USPS.

    • You can also lock your debit card in online/mobile banking when you’re not using it.

  • I just noticed Pelican has a kasasa tracker dashboard. Has that been there the whole time? Their overall dashboard is really busy so maybe I missed it. It's nice to have tho. Too bad the interest rate went down and I'm looking for other places. I will always love Pelican tho. They have been great.

    • Can you clarify what you mean by "kasasa tracker dashboard"? I assumed that you meant a tracker like Liberty or LMCU uses but I see no such thing. My Pelican dashboard looks the same as it always has.

      BTW, I saw your comment in the other post about how you use only 6% and 7% accounts. What are the accounts that you use that require those 100 debits?

      • most of the activity-based accounts require 15 or so debits per month- the ones i have/had that used to pay 6% or higher would have needed at least that many each month: onpath (15 to earn 7%), andrews (15 to earn 6%), fitnessbank (dropped the rate but requires 15), kanza (dropped the rate but requires 15), pelican (dropped the rate but requires 15), uncle (discontinued the account type but required 12), encurage (merged with another cu, nerfed the rate, and increased the debit count required, but needed 12 back when it paid 6.05%), bcu (limited-time double rate, needed 30 to earn 8%)--plus there are some accounts that require monthly debit swipes to earn a bonus or avoid a fee, it's not unusual to wind up needing to come up with 100+ transactions a month

        • @guest_1820702,

          The key is you put "used to pay". I asked @guest_1794209 what current 6% & 7% accounts that they use for the 100 monthly debits. I want to see if there are any that I don't know about. I only know about CUNJ, Andrews & OP.

  • @2,

    The rate is only 5.01% now so you can update the post. @guest_1942005 was the 1st one to notice this change, AFAIK.

  • @guest_1479131,

    Now I am even more sure that Pelican and Andrews use the same system. A bill that I had been paying online changed from "SIGNATURE" to "WITHDRAWAL BILL PAYMENT" for Pelican this month.

    The same thing happened to Andrews (except with slightly different wording) this month.
    This is the 2nd type of bill that used to work as a QDP for both and now no longer does. ☹

    I guess that the only positive is that this makes it even more likely that "POS" DOES count for Pelican, like I speculated yesterday.

    • @guest_1495106, I think you are probably right about "POS" counting towards the 15 debit card transactions. As I mentioned in my last statement with you, I also have a high yield account with Origin Bank. Like Pelican it has an APY of 6%. Also like Pelican, Origin requires that I make debit card purchases, 16 per month. I've been doing Amazon gift card reloads for Origin as well. I looked at my Origin Amazon transactions. They all look like this: POS PURCHASE MERCHANT PURCHASE TERMINAL 969296 Amazon com YF7W45E W3 Amzn com WA 10-01-24 SEQ # 48753506301 Amount:$5.00
      (Note: I've changed some of the numbers to protect my identity.)

      At Origin, every "POS" transaction counts towards the required number of debit card purchases. So I'm thinking, Pelican must treat "POS" transactions the same way.

      I've been doing a total of 31 Amazon $5 gift card reloads every month, 15 at Pelican and 16 at Origin. I know, it's crazy! I realized that I need to find a better way. So yesterday I looked into doing Cash App transactions. I had totally forgotten that I actually tried this tactic over 20 months ago. There's actually a record of me talking about it on this very thread. I did try Cash App using Pelican. It worked way back then. The transactions registered as "SIGNATURE" on my Pelican statement. I only made 4 transactions and then abandoned the project all together, because at the time, Amazon still allowed $1 reloads.

      I still have the Cash App card, so I tried it again yesterday and found that it still works! The Cash App transactions register as "SIGNATURE" purchases at Pelican. The best thing about it is that each transaction needs to be only $1. Today I will try it using Origin.

        • Yes, definitely. Many thanks to you, @guest_1495106! 
          Btw, Cash App seems to work at Origin Bank too.

  • @guest_1479131 @guest_1791113 @guest_1729049

    I made a small purchase from Ebay recently and I just checked my statement and it surprisingly showed up as "WITHDRAWAL POS" instead of "SIGNATURE". I had this happen only 1 other time with a WM purchase that I made back in July.

    In July, I made 15 "SIGNATURE" purchases and ignored this WM purchase. Since Pelican doesn't send a monthly report like OP does, I don't know if that WM purchase counted or not (ie if I had 15 or 16 qualifying debit purchases that month).

    I plan to do the same thing for October and ignore this Ebay purchase and make 15 "SIGNATURE" purchases to be safe.

    However, I am curious if any of you have had a purchase show up as "WITHDRAWAL POS" in the past. If so, do you know whether it does count or not?

    • @guest_1495106, I've been doing just 15 Amazon gift card reloads every month. However, back in April of this year, I made a $35 purchase at Amazon using my Pelican card. That purchase shows up in my account register as WITHDRAWAL POS. I don't know if it counted because I also made 15 gift card SIGNATURE reloads that same month.

      Amazon gives you the option to treat your bank card as a debit card or as a credit card. I may have inadvertently unchecked the little square that signifies to Amazon my preference to use my Pelican card as a debit card. That would explain why that particular purchase registered as a POS.

      • You must spend a lot on Amazon to be able to reload $75+ every single month. Do you use any other HY accounts besides Pelican?

        BTW, since you spend $5+ on every purchase, do you want to be the sacrificial lamb and ask Pelican if that "POS" purchase counted?

        • @guest_1495106, I wish I didn't have to reload $75 per month. I could use tips on what else I can spend those debit card purchases on. You mentioned that most of your debit card purchases are less than $1. Could you please share with us what you spend it on?

          What is an HY account?

          That $35 Pelican credit card purchase was way back in April. I'm sorry but I don't want to be that sacrificial lamb.

          • Many of my < $1 purchases are in-store buying bananas.

            HY = High Yield (ie OP, Pelican). I was asking if you use any others besides Pelican.

          • This is what I do as well. Scan one banana at a time. Pay. Repeat. I buy other stuff too, but the bananas are great for those accounts that don't demand a minimum for the swipe to count. Note that some places will decline if you do 2 in a row for the same price or if you do more than 4 or 5 close together. Depends on the bank and their settings. I've had to answer "fraud detection" texts/calls while still standing at the self checkout.

          • What do you do with all those bananas? Maybe I don't want to know.

            After I had so many boxes of them I'd be tempted to just start putting my fingertip on the scale to get it to a few pennies without really buying anything.

            By the way CashApp is still working at Pelican. And the withdrawal POS thing mentioned above is a non-issue there.

          • @guest_1794209,

            I take it that you didn't forget the grudge that you apparently held against @guest_1853506 and me from several months ago. I asked you a similar question back then and you ignored that also here: #1853447.

            The joke's on you though because you actually replied to an older comment from my old "user account" so you didn't ignore me completely!

          • Right now, I am using Pelican, Varo, Marcus, SoFi, and Origin. They all currently have APY's > 4%.

            I might try doing the Cash App transactions that Mothman69 is describing.

    • I'm fairly certain anything labeled Withdrawal will not count. I had a bunch of cash app transactions randomly labeled Withdrawal back in June and I did not qualify for the interest that month.

      • @guest_1791113 @guest_1729049

        #1. I just looked at 1 of my Pelican statements for the 1st time. It turns out that even the debit transactions that are labelled "SIGNATURE" on the online platform show "Withdrawal Debit Card Signature" on the statement. Therefore, the word "WITHDRAWAL" appearing is irrelevant.

        #2. I was asking about the word "POS" specifically. I guess that I should have bolded that in my initial comment to be more clear. I was asking if any of the 5 of you had ever had "POS" appear rather than "SIGNATURE" OR "BILL PAYMENT" when using your Pelican debit card.

        #3. I already know that "WITHDRAWAL BILL PAYMENT" does not count based on the experience from @guest_1479131.

        #4. The Pelican system seems very similar to Andrews from my experience. "WITHDRAWAL BILL PAYMENT" DOES NOT count for Andrews but "WITHDRAWAL POS" does count.

        #5. The reason I know #4 is because Andrews, like OP, gives a monthly report. I unintentionally experimented with Andrews and figured all of this out over a couple of months.

        #6. It's hard to believe that an Ebay purchase wouldn't count as a qualifying debit card purchase. How much more of a "legit" purchase can you get than that?

        #7. That being said, I won't rely on it counting unless Pelican specifically told me that it would count.

        #8. However, I have no interest in contacting Pelican proactively about this as I don't want to draw attention to the majority of my debit card purchases, which are < $1. 😉

    • Just searched my transactions and I see Citi CC payment comes up as Withdrawal, and so did PayPal bill payment. I have a note on my spreadsheet that Venmo, Citi do not work for the Pelican spend because of this. I am using CaspApp now since it comes up with Signature. @guest_1495106

    • @guest_1820702 @guest_1495020

      I have the same question for both of you. I didn't want my comment to go to moderation so I left my initial comment to 3 tags. 😉

  • For those doing Cash App loads to meet the monthly debit card requirements, make sure the transactions say SIGNATURE CASH APP and not WITHDRAWAL ACH CASH APP. The transactions labeled WITHDRAWAL will not count, but those labeled SIGNATURE will.

    I have no idea why some Cash App loads are labeled one way and some other the other way. P1 did 15x loads in May and all of them were labeled WITHDRAWAL, but P2 also did 15x loads in May and all of them were labeled SIGNATURE. P2 received the 6.05% interest payment and P1 did not.

    • Sounds like your cashapp transactions aren't using the debit card. When you are on the screen that shows where the funding is coming from in cashapp, make sure it shows the debit card. You could delete the checking account to be sure the debit card portion is working. Once, I didn't realize the stored debit card had expired and that happened. It didn't tell me my card was expired.

  • As of 5/23, my vrz payment using debit card shows up as withdrawal and not signature. I am not sure if it will still count or not.

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