Porte Banking gives 3% APY on balance up to $15,000. They also provide $50 referral bonus for both referrer and referred granted the referred user’s account receives a $500 or more in direct deposit within 6 months of account opening.
https://portebanking.app.link/qhRsa526icb
Using above referral supports this blog
The direct deposit requirement is very easy to meet. I know for sure that Alliant and Ally work.
To “unlock” a 3% saving account, you need to deposit net 1k in direct deposit. So you might as well direct deposit $1k to get the referral bonus as well as unlock the saving account.
A 3% APY is top notch, especially considering the current situation with pandemic and all. A couple could earn $150 ($50+$50+$50) through referral and get 3% APY on net $30k ($15k+$15k) spread across two accounts. That is a really difficult to beat in the current market.
Additionally, Porte allows you to lock your debit card (seemingly common feature now) as well as create virtual account numbers.
So where is the catch? The catch is that it is Porte is that FinTech bank I was talking about. Their customer reach is pretty poor and their app, although smooth running, is lacking in certain features.
You can’t use Google Voice as phone number (ok fine several others don’t allow that either). Two Porte accounts (or applications) can’t have the same phone number. If somehow you mess up your application and want to start over again, you’ll have to use a different phone number.
Sure, you could contact them and fix it but they currently don’t even offer an “offline chat” feature that many FinTech banks have. I suppose you could workaround that by clicking on your profile -> support -> app feedback.
Their email address, humansupport@cs.portebanking.com, is not easily available. So, the primary way most people are going to contact them is by calling them. Oh and you can’t talk with them unless you have an existing account with them. This means, if you messed up your application, you can’t fix it by calling them.
The other issue people like to bring up with FDIC insurance because Porte itself isn’t a bank. However, your money is actually stored with MetaBank which is an FDIC insured bank. If you look at your Porte account’s routing number it is essentially the routing number of MetaBank (073972181).
It is worth noting that users have had issues with initiating money transfer from Porte with Porte app itself. See this reddit thread as an example. But if you’re reading this blog then you should have a hub account from which you initiate transfers and in that case you should have no problem. Remember your account is with MetaBank so by initiating push/pull from another bank, you’re practically skipping the middleman that is Porte.
Just to prove my point, I pushed and pulled $10k-15k several times and had zero issues.
Closing Thoughts
3% APY with $50 bonus is really good. However, Porte is tainted because of lack of customer service as well as dated and feature lacking banking application.
I don’t see 3% APY lasting too long so make use of it while you can.
1 comment
[…] is also worth noting that you can easily get 3% through various fintech like Porte ($50 signup bonus) , HMB, or One Finance ($50 signup bonus) or even 5% if you hardcore shop for better rates and go on […]