Beam Review – High Interest Savings Account – Earn 2-4% APY With No Fees

Beam is a new high interest account that is FDIC insured and has no fees. They claim that they will offer users anywhere from 2-4% APY. You can watch their youtube video below, the gist of their pitch is that financial institutions make a lot of money from putting your savings account money to use and savings account holders deserve more of this money.

APY Range

They advertise a rate of 2%-4% APY. In their F.A.Q they state that the minimum any user will receive is 2% and then there will be additional features in app that let users earn more.

Referral Program

Beam currently lets you refer friends. You’ll move up the waitlist for each friend that you refer. In addition the top ten referrers will win a 7% APY interest reward for 100 days. No maximum balance is mentioned. My referral link is here. Feel free to share your own links or use other readers in this linked post. Do not share them in the comments below as I’d like to keep that clean for discussion of Beam itself.

Avoiding Fees

They have no fees at all according to their F.A.Q.

Our Verdict

If this account has no requirements to receive the 2% rate then it will be the clear best basic savings accounts as the current best is offering 2%. At the moment there isn’t enough information to decide if opening an account makes sense or not as we still don’t know if there is any cap on your deposits. A 4% rate would make it competitive compared to other rewards checking accounts, again depending on the deposit caps and also the requirements.

According to Angel.co they have raised funds from IDG-Accel China Team and are led by Aaron Du (formerly at JP Morgan Chase). Personally at this stage I have a healthy amount of skepticism about Beam, we simply don’t know enough about Beam to make any definitive statements. I’d also like to know who the backing bank is at it’s unlikely they are building that infrastructure from scratch.

Hat tip to I_Am_Now_Anonymous on /r/churning

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Mike Mobley
Mike Mobley (@guest_1082472)
October 30, 2020 20:30

Kathleen, your money may be gone forever. CNBC write the attached article about Beam on Wed.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/28/beam-promised-higher-interest-rates-now-customers-want-their-money-back.html

Kathleen Holliday
Kathleen Holliday (@guest_1075008)
October 18, 2020 15:49

They did launch. It has been a disaster for anyone who needs to do a withdrawal. They say 3 to 5 days and I have been waiting since mid August….Be very careful…..the FDIC says they are not insured and and the bank they claim has the money Evolve bank, has no affiliation with Beam. Have lost my money?

Shaun
Shaun (@guest_830670)
October 25, 2019 11:59

 William Charles  Chuck

Any plans for an updated review of Beam? I was just invited. Looks like it’s in public beta?

Their APY range is now 1.7-7% Seems kind of complicated with things like earning “billies” and having it gift you random APY boosts. Would be appreciated to have your expertise laying this all out if is is worth it or not.

Looks like the public beta is available for Android users now, too.

Thanks for all y’all do.

Chuck
Editor
Chuck(@chucksithe)
November 4, 2019 22:52

Yeah, it looks like the rates are pretty standard now.

Kathleen Holliday
Kathleen Holliday (@guest_1091963)
November 16, 2020 12:26

Do not sdeposit with Beam. No one has been able to initiate a withdrawal in the last several months

SamSimon
SamSimon (@guest_578223)
April 5, 2018 11:21

Will I be able to use Credit Card to fund the account this is important question.

Harold
Harold (@guest_571230)
March 17, 2018 09:33

They seem to be making progress. The email that they sent is below. According to their website, their queue currently has 54,656 people.

Dear Beam-liever,

We are pleased to inform you that you are one of the Top 30,000 on the Beam waitlist based on your current position as of March 16, 2018. As you may know, Top 10 on the Beam’s waitlist will be awarded with a 7% APY interest reward for the first 100 days from our initial launch date.

So when’s our “launch date”? Beginning end of this month (March), Beam will begin its phased rollout for its Private Beta, a feature-limited version of Beam. In order to ensure that we have an accurate count of who will be awarded with the Top 10 honor, we want to clarify the following rules:

First, the effective Evaluation Date for the Top 10 position will be March 27, 2018 at 3pm PDT / 6pm EST. We will promptly tabulate the results based on your position at the Evaluation Date, not before or after.

Second, we’ve recently upgraded our waitlist system to require email verification for all waitlisters. You must verify your email to authenticate your spot on the waitlist. To do so, re-enter your email address on Beam’s Home page to request a copy of the verification email to be sent to you, which will contain instructions for next steps. Failing to verify your email may put your Private Beta spot at risk.

So how much more can I move up the list if I refer just one more friend to the waitlist? Often thousands of spots, but it can depend on where you are on the waitlist. Remember to check on details of your waitlist position on your status page, where you can also find out more about the impact of each referral.

The Top 10 honorees will receive an email about next steps shortly after the Evaluation Date, including a public announcement on our very own Beam Journal. If you have any questions about the aforementioned process, feel free to reach out to us by replying to this email.

Have a great weekend!
Beam Team

Calvin
Calvin (@guest_527658)
November 30, 2017 19:14

** Full email **

Dear Beam-lievers,
Today we are here to update you on the status of our product development and launch timeline for Beam.

The banking domain is one of the most complex domains to get into, not to mention to innovate and to offer new products and services. This complexity is manifested in legal, regulatory, security, technology, servicing and a plethora of other dimensions of our business.

Over the past few months we have been pouring our efforts to bring Beam to you sooner. Nevertheless, due to our resources, we have been unable to be as responsive as we had wanted or move as fast as we had wanted. In short, we have over-committed ourselves to releasing the Beam service to you on or before November.

Presently this timeline has been pushed back to Q1 2018. We will work to bring you continuous updates from now until then to keep you posted.
A Token of Appreciation for Your Faith
While we are embarrassed and regretful about missing our commitment to our fervent waitlist customers, we recognize that just apologizing isn’t enough. To compensate for the delay, we’ll be offering a FREE “special privilege” for those who registered on our waitlist on or before November 30, 2017.

When Beam launches, those who registered on our waitlist on or before November 30, 2017 will be able to have the special privilege to invite 2 of their friends and family members to use Beam immediately when it is publicly available. This privilege will be available only to these waitlisters for the foreseeable future.
Why We Do vs. What We Do
Many of you are attracted to Beam because of the differentiated product we offer. Here we want to share the why behind what we do, summarized in the Beam mission below:

Beam Mission: To inspire Justice and Simplicity in banking and beyond.
Why should you care? As Beam-lievers, we would like to lay this out there so YOU can keep us in check. None of what we do is merely about us; it’s about YOU. Help us make this mission a reality.

You can learn more about why we do what we do at our latest Beam Journal blog piece here . Over the next few months, we will be keeping you posted either through email or our Beam Journal, so stay tuned.

To change banking isn’t the easiest mission to take on. The road is long and hard, and that makes everyone of us at Beam here ever more appreciative of the patience of our early supporters, time and time again.

We look forward to staying in touch over the next few months as we continue to work on launching Beam.

Early happy holidays to you and your families.

Ever truly yours,
Yinan Du, CEO of Beam
On Behalf of the entire Beam Team ❤️
P.S. We’re working hard…

DC
DC (@guest_527451)
November 30, 2017 12:43

A Token of Appreciation for Your Faith
While we are embarrassed and regretful about missing our commitment to our fervent waitlist customers, we recognize that just apologizing isn’t enough. To compensate for the delay, we’ll be offering a FREE “special privilege” for those who registered on our waitlist on or before November 30, 2017.

When Beam launches, those who registered on our waitlist on or before November 30, 2017 will be able to have the special privilege to invite 2 of their friends and family members to use Beam immediately when it is publicly available. This privilege will be available only to these waitlisters for the foreseeable future.

Bub
Bub (@guest_479017)
September 18, 2017 17:03

This place featured today on Forbes. Still relatively few confirmed facts.

Ann
Ann (@guest_485116)
October 1, 2017 07:34

https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurengensler/2017/09/18/high-yield-online-savings-account-beam/

“there is some legwork involved in nabbing the 4% rate. Beam promises all users a 2% interest rate on up to $50,000. To earn more than that, Du says, users will essentially be rewarded for logging into, and engaging with, the app. He declined to share too many details before launch.”

“Deposits will be held by a FDIC-insured bank partner, which means balances up to $250,000 will be covered in the event that Beam or the bank goes out of business. Beam has declined to share publicly which bank it is partnering with before launch, other than to say it is a U.S.-based bank that has been in operation for decades.”

Natalie Duarte de escalante
Natalie Duarte de escalante (@guest_466317)
August 26, 2017 16:45

I just want to know if the backing bank is American-owned. If not, that’s a deal breaker for me.

Emil
Emil (@guest_451727)
August 2, 2017 12:02

The web is so slow that i sont even know if i signed up or not, did you receive an email just like aspiration does with theyr clients on waitlist? Or beam dont send no email after signing up.

Emil
Emil (@guest_451786)
August 2, 2017 13:20

Nvm im in, the page finally loaded