OnJuno Complete Review [Debit Reward Increased to $500]

8/1/2023 Update: The cashback limit has been increased from $300/year to $500/year. Juno debit card earns 5% on various merchants so now you can earn 5% on upto $10,000 spend/year.

June 2023 blog post: Juno introduces a 2% debit card funding fee. Also, Juno pays you for direct deposit.

May 2023 blog post: Juno removes Walmart as a 5% Merchant.

9/25/2022 Update: If you are still interested in Juno, you need to read the following blog post: [WARNING] Juno to Release Their Own Crypto $JCOIN.

6/1/2022 Update: Several updates so I will be brief once again. BTC and ETH earn 3% APY. Funding with debit is enabled again. Last but not least, based on their FAQ here appears that 10% cashback promotion has been extended until June 30, 2022 but the OnJuno app still lists the old expiry date on May 31st, 2022.

5/4/2022 Update: Onjuno bumped the number of brands you can select to 10 (previously 5). They have also added various brands including Verizon, American Airlines, and Xfinity. By the way, they continue add more crypto and over the past couple of weeks they have added AVAX, LINK, AAVE, and UNI.

4/4/2022 Update: On 4/1/2022 USDC APY was updated to 6%. Also, it appears customers who were getting 4% APY were given “extra USDC yield” as in they were likely given extra 2% on their previous yeild.

3/23/2022 Update: Yearly cashback limit has been doubled (from $150 to $300).

3/21/2022 Update: Until May 1, 2022 Onjuno has doubled referral bonus to $100 for both referrer and referred. The referred must receive $250 direct deposit by May 1st. The referrer will also get a free T-shirt. The maximum referral per account is still 10 however because each referrer can get you $100, you can potentially earn up to $1000 via referral (previously capped to $500). Read more here. Edit: Yes, the referral links says $50 but they work into getting you $100.

3/19/2022 Update: On 3/16 OnJuno airdropped $10 to several accounts. And it appears there is no more fee on withdrawal of MUSDC. OnJuno is now an excellent onramp platform for platform that support MUSDC, eg Crypto.com (reviewed here).

3/2/2022 Update: I know I said there was no option to withdraw MUSDC yesterday but they seem to have pushed an update which makes withdraw of MUSDC possible. This is HUGE!

OnJuno is a fintech bank that seems to innovate over and over again. Today I will thoroughly review their services and features that are available thus far.

Easy $100 Referral Bonus

OnJuno offers an easy yet lucrative enough referral bonus. You can earn $100 by making $250 or more in direct deposit.

Join using this referral link and both of us get $100 bonus after you make $250 direct deposit. As always thank you for supporting the blog.

How I did Fast and Easy Direct Deposit

I pushed more than $250 into OnJuno using American Express Business Checking Account. Said business account currently has a signup bonus of $300 and you can find a direct link to it here.

The transfer made it into OnJuno account within 24 hours and the signup bonus posted as a “referral bonus” pretty much at the same time. The referrer, another household account, also got $50 referral bonus instantly.

Now, with $250 monthly direct deposit comes “metal membership” which is worth talking about.

Metal Membership

Metal membership, as you can guess, qualifies you for a metal debit card. And as I mentioned before the qualification for metal membership is simply a monthly $250 direct deposit.

If you attempt to upgrade to metal membership you will be greeted with three perks:

1. 1.20% APY on balances up to $50,000
2. exclusive metal card
3. 5% cash-back on spends up to $3,000

But the actual perks of metal membership extend beyond that so let’s go through the details.

(Side Note: if you need the metal membership quicker I suggest contacting support as soon as the direct deposit hits. I was told “Generally, after direct deposit within 24-48 hours, the tier would change to Metal”. But if that isn’t the case (or as I said if you want it sooner) then contact support. They seem to get back to you within half an hour).

5% Cashback

The 5% cashback is on select brands and has an annual cap of $150 $300. You can select 5 10 brands from the following list:

1. Entertainments: HBO, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Spotify, Disney+, Apple
2. Groceries: Walgreens, Patel Brothers, Whole Food Market
3. Shopping: Best Buy, Walmart, The Home Depot, Target, Trader Joe’s, Amazon, ALDI, Sam’s Club, Kroger
4. Health: Headspace, Calm, CVS Pharmacy, Pelton
5. Food and Drinks: Grubhub, UberEats, Taco Bell, Dunkin’, DoorDash, Postmates, Starbucks, Blue Bottle Coffee, Chick-fil-A, In-N-Out Burger, Wendy’s
6. Transportation: Lyft, Shell, Uber, Chevron, American Airlines, United Airlines, Exxon
7. Travel: Airbnb
8. 8. Services: Verizon, Xfinity

This is obviously an easy $150/year $300/year but wait it gets better.

Debit Card Funding

OnJuno recently added a feature that allows users to fund their their account using a debit, credit, or even prepaid cards. There is a daily limit of $500 and the fees are a little out there:

1. prepaid card: 2.3% + 60 cents
2. debit card: 2% + 60 cents
3. credit card: 3.5% + 60 cents

This feature is currently only available to Metal Card users. However, as of 2/27/2022, the feature has been paused due to technical issues. An OnJuno support staff writes:

Yes, please note that Funding via Card has been paused for all our users on the platform due to an issue with our processor, we have the team looking into this. You will be notified once this feature is back up and running.

6/1/2022 Update: Debit card funding has been working for about a week, maybe more.

10% Cashback [Limited Time Promotions]

For a limited time OnJuno is offering 10% cashback (as opposed to 5%) on select stores. You can read about it on this blogpost. They also have an easy $10 BTC promotion which you can read about in this blogpost.

Send Money Abroad

OnJuno, through partnership with Wise (formerly TransferWise), allows you to send money abroad. Unfortunately, the existing number of supported currencies/countries are few (fewer than going directly through Wise) and you are still required to login through Wise. Yet, I appreciate this integration because it is one step closer to getting not so tech savvy people into using Wise, which quite frankly has one of the best rates.

The rates on Wise are so good that I see “but crypto is great for remittance” argument has been reduced to an illogical one. Speaking of crypto, the next few sections are all about OnJuno’s crypto integration.

Crypto On/Off Ramp?

OnJuno currently allows you to buy/sell as well as deposit/withdraw various crypto assets.

As far as I can see Polygon USDC (MUSDC) isn’t currently withdrawable but should that be the case then OnJuno could be an excellent onramp account (b/c MUSDC withdrawal fees are low). Various exchanges allow you to deposit/withdraw MUSDC like Crypto.com and OkCoin.

OnJuno can also be a good off ramp platform if you can get listed assets deposited to OnJuno through crypto CeFi platforms that allow free withdrawal. If ERC-20 USDC fees are low enough and your withdrawal amount is high enough then withdrawing USDC itself is very viable.

The on/off ramp is only going to get better as they add more coins. Imagine if they added coins that have low transfer fee yet go through very quickly like XLM or even Stellar based USDC.

Now, because they have integrated crypto into their platform, I would assume they are also less likely to shutdown users for withdrawing/depositing to/from crypto platforms.

Crypto Buy/Sell and Withdrawal Fees

Whenever we talk about crypto it is important to mention fees so let’s do just that. There is (was?) fee free period until February 28th, 2022 but I can seemingly still make fee free purchases. For example, 1 USDC can be purchased with exactly 1 USD. It is worth pointing out that the fee free period was supposed to expire in December of 2021 so given that they have extended the fee free period they might do it again?

Anyway, based on their help page, after $250k in volume, there is a 0.95% fee on buy/sell orders.

OnJuno does not charge withdrawal or deposit fees but network fees will apply. You can check an estimate of withdrawal fee by attempting to withdraw (see third screenshot below).

I was pleasantly surprised by how easy and smooth they have made the withdrawal prompts. I suppose I was too used to the glitches that comes with various crypto platforms.

6% APY on USDC

The USDC held on OnJuno earns 4% 6% APY, however, it is worth pointing out that

1. amount held as USDC is not FDIC insured. In fact, no crypto, including any stable coins, is FDIC insured.
2. You can in at least twice as much APY on various crypto based platforms. See this and this post for alternatives.

Setup Direct Deposit in Crypto

Being able to get paid in crypto is cryptobro’s wet dream and OnJuno takes a step in fulfilling that dream. You can directly convert your direct deposit into crypto. In the example below, I have distributed $1000 (see 3rd and 4th screenshot below) into BTC, ETH, USDC, and USD. BTC Maxis are welcome to convert 100% of their direct deposit to BTC while ETH Maxis can do the same with ETH.

They even allow you to directly sent crypto direct deposit to external wallet (network fees apply).

Am I going to use this feature? Probably not for anything but auto conversion to USDC. Regardless, it is a cool feature.

Closing Thoughts

I am amazed by the work they are doing. A lot of the time we see fintech banks get comfortable on their “gimmick” and they more or less stop to innovate but that doesn’t seem to be the case with OnJuno. Maybe they are still looking to “land big” but regardless of the reason, it is clear that the folks at OnJuno continue to work on new products and features. I remember when OnJuno’s metal membership used to be paid but I am glad they did away with it and ended up with something that works for them as well as the consumers.

Anyway, apart from $50 $100 in signup bonus, this is also an easy $150/year $300/year.