This is not to be confused with the other Consumers Credit Union that is available nationwide and offers 4.09% APY.
Offer at a glance
- Interest Rate: 4% APY
- Minimum Balance: None
- Maximum Balance: $15,000
- Availability: MI only
- Direct deposit required: Yes, $1,000+
- Additional requirements: See below
- Hard/soft pull: Unknown
- ChexSystems: Unknown
- Credit card funding: Unknown
- Monthly fees: None
- Insured: NCUA
The Offer
- Consumers Credit Union offers the Serious Interest Checking account this offers 4% APY on balances up to $15,000 when the following requirements are met:
- 12 posted debit card transactions per month
- An average daily balance of $1,000+
- $1,000 minimum recurring monthly direct deposit
- Enrolled in eStatements
The Fine Print
- All bank account bonuses are treated as income/interest and as such you have to pay taxes on them
Avoiding Fees
This account has no monthly fees to worry about.
Our Verdict
This credit union also offers a $200 business checking bonus. We still don’t know if it’s a hard or soft pull. Requirements are a little annoying to meet, but getting more difficult to get these high APY rates now.
View Comments (20)
Signed up and was approved last week. Also can verify there was no hard pull.
I signed up today online and had to unlock/unfreeze my transunion and experian, however after I signed up and was approved there was no hard pull. I locked my transunion and my experian is set to freeze Monday, so I am not sure if they just soft pull. When I applied earlier in the week with everything locked, the application did not even go through and the bank reached out indicating they could not open my account with my credit locked. I will see if any notifications come through tomorrow.
Most people would have started this story in sequential order. It's not uncommon for a bank or credit union to ask you to unlock/thaw your credit, even if just for a soft pull. They need it for ID verification and general credit information. I wish you luck and hope it's not a hard pull!
Confirmed no hard pull for me.
Good to know. I wonder if they changed their policy or if the rep I got didn't give me the right answer. Is there a debit card transaction tracker to know if the requirements have been met? When I asked last year they said no. Also any idea if they care about repetitive micro transactions to meet debit requirement?
I could have sworn that this was a HP, which is why I never signed up. And, someone below just state that it is. OP, if you still have your file locked, or if you have time to extend the lock, I'd keep it locked so that they (hopefully) can't do the HP.
Got this confused w the other cred union. But, someone here still stated that there's a HP. Not sure if they called the right company. How in the world are they allowed to have the same name?
From T&C: "Live, work or be enrolled in post-secondary educational institutions in the lower peninsula of Michigan."
Will be pushing / pulling 1k from ally to consumers every month. Will see if it posts as DD.
Did it work?
It did not work. I then tried with capital one 360 DD and venmo payments for the debit card reqs so its either the capital one 360 or the venmo that fixed it. Will remove one from next cycle to pinpoint which.
Any update here on what worked?
How strict are mega HISA banks where they require monthly DD to meet he HISA bonus? Most are small credit unions and I am "guessing" not as attentive in disqualifying certain ACH types such as bank transfers compared to larger banks where people churn bank bonuses.
I plan on using Ally bank recurring transfers every month to push / pull from banks like this. Do you think I would have problems this way?
I contacted the customer service representative, and they confirmed that membership requires a hard credit pull from all three credit agencies.
What qualifies as a debit transaction? Does anyone know? (does reloading your Amazon account 50 cents count for example?)
strange that they would offer a MI only account when their other nation-wide account offers basically the same rate with very similar requirements.
that being said, when i was taking advantage of the nationwide account, they counted any ACH as a DD and didn't seem to care about buying $500 VGCs to meet $1000/month visa spend, so the requirements were pretty easy to meet
@guest_1078937 Re-read Will's first line and check out the URLs in both articles - the "Consumers Credit Union" you're thinking of is headquartered in Illinois. This one is headquartered in Michigan. The account qualification requirements and geofencing are different because the one Will highlighted here is at a completely different Credit Union whose membership is only open to Michigan. They share the same name, but they are completely unrelated otherwise
wow, i totally missed the "other" in there haha.. that is super confusing that they're named the same thing
Completely threw me for a loop when I was looking to join the one in Illinois a year ago :-)
I don't believe the other Consumers you are talking about is affiliated at all. They just have similar names.
I contacted them a couple months back and they confirmed that membership requires a hard pull. I didn't ask which bureau though.