PerkStreet.com is an online-only bank, with a good cash back debit card rewards program. You can earn a variety of rewards, including coffee, music downloads, gift cards to popular retailers or cash back. You can use PerkStreet.com as your primary bank, or as a secondary bank for online transactions. You can even earn up to 5% cash back at certain retailers. One major drawback? To enjoy 2% cash back (or the equivalent) on any non-pin purchase, you must have a current account balance of $5,000 or more.
Competition is getting heavy in the debit card rewards arena, and another contender steps up to the plate in the form of PerkStreet.com, a new online-only bank garnering acclaim for its generous rewards, friendly service and ATM machines on nearly every corner. (If you have a CVS, 7-11, Hess Gas Station or any STAR ATM near you, you can access money using your debit card free of surcharges from the ATM machine or the bank.)
The Perk Street Financial Cash Back Debit Card — and the bank’s online-only checking account — works essentially the same as a debit card from your brick-and-mortar bank.
To make a deposit, you can transfer funds electronically from Paypal, Google checkout or another online payment program, or from your brick-and-mortar bank, or even from an online savings account. You can also mail in a check or money order to PerkStreet to make a deposit.
Once the money’s in your account, it’s even easier to access. PerkStreet has partnered with STAR, one of the oldest and most reputable ATM networks. If you use a STAR ATM, you can withdraw money with no surcharges from the ATM machine or from your bank.
When you use your Perk Street Financial Cash Back Debit Card for non-pin transactions, though, you’ll really begin to rack up the rewards points.
If you have less than $5000 in your checking account at the start of the day, you’ll get 1% cash back on every purchase. You’ll get 2 % cash back if your account balance is more than $5,000.
If you choose “perks” instead, you can earn free coffee from a number of popular coffee chains, free music downloads or gift cards.
Perk Street translates this into terms you can easily understand:
- If your account has more than $5,000, you’ll earn 2 song downloads or 2 cups of coffee for every $100 in purchases.
- If your account balance is less than $5,000, you’ll earn 1 song or 1 cup of coffee for every $100 in purchases.
- Shop at selected retailers and earn 5 songs, 5 cups of coffee (you’ll need more energy for all that shopping!) or 5% cash back for every $100 spent (if your account balance is more than $5,000).
- For the first 90 days after you open your account, you’ll get 2% cash back or 2X Perks regardless of your account balance. You need a minimum of $25 to open an account.
- Easy, secure online banking
- A network of 37,000 surcharge-free ATMs to withdraw money
- No expiration date on perks
- Change perks at any time with no penalty
- Earn up to 5% cash back
- Other debit cards, like Chase, have more generous rewards programs, like 2% cash back on every day purchases
- Other debit cards have a wider range of rewards you can enjoy
- Minimum balance of $5,000 to enjoy the maximum level of rewards
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Comments:
July 20th, 2010 at 2:18 pm
Hi Dawn,
Thanks for the review! We’re glad you checked us out. I wanted to clarify a few points you made in your post:
-The free ATM network is through the STARsf system, not STAR. We offer an ATM locator on our site to make it easy for you to find a free ATM near you: http://perkstreet.com/atms.aspx
-Our checking account is free, no annual fees, and there are no account minimums to get 1% cash back. Definitely important to note when comparing!
-Re: wider range of rewards: When you choose cash back as your perk, you can get a Visa® Gift Card, which can be used anywhere credit cards are accepted. We leave the range of where you spend it up to you! http://perkstreet.com/cash.aspx
Communicating clearly is really important to us, so thank you for noting that we do! You can also find us on Facebook (http://facebook.com/perkstreet) or on Twitter (http://twitter.com/perkstreet) – I’m the voice behind both so come say hi.
Jennifer Scott
Digital Communications Manager
PerkStreet Financial
August 9th, 2010 at 5:27 pm
There are several problems with this bank, so I would warn potential customers to be aware of the fine print. Although PerkStreet’s website has the appearance of being clear about their policies, I found that not to be the case. These “fine print” policies seem designed to (1) make it difficult to move money out of the account, and (2) to limit the cashback that you can earn. Below are examples.
(1) They have a limit of $1500 on incoming online transfers in an entire *month*! They don’t tell you about this anywhere except when you actually try to move money into your account. When I called them about it, they said that they have this restriction for new customers and I was still in my first month. After a couple more calls, I realized that they will increase this limit to $2500 after six months.
Stated reason: Security.
Suspected motive: To limit the amount of money you can spend to get cashback.
(2) They have a limit of $500 on outgoing online transfers. So, say you move $5000 into your account to get 2% cashback. You are stuck with that money with them for the rest of the month (unless you adopt a slower paper check route).
(3) They have a limit of $1500 on daily expenses and explicitly say on their website that it can be waived simply by making a phone call. I had to book two one-way international flight tickets that cost a total of over $1500. I booked these and called them to waive the limit. They refused to do so because I was still in my first month. There is no notice about waivers not being allowed in the first month anywhere. As a result, I have to now spend much more money re-booking that ticket just because PerkStreet does not allow me to spend my own money.
Stated reason: Security for new customers. They claim that all banks have spending limits on debit cards. Really? Bank of America did not.
Suspected motive: Limiting spending => limiting cashback.
(4) When I tried to circumvent the limitation in (1) above to move more money into my account using FedEx, there was another surprise! The first FedEx check takes not 1 day as stated, but about 9 days for some reason. Again, some vague security reason that is incomprehensible to rational beings is given as an explanation.
Bottomline: It is not easy to get much cashback because of their restrictive policies on what you can do with your money. And they make it harder to move money out of the account while not giving any interest on it. As for the 5% cashback, they are on such specific and tiny items that I have never been able to get 5% cashback so far.
August 17th, 2010 at 5:33 am
My name is Jason Henrichs and I work for PerkStreet. I’ve corresponded with AV since his experience and also worked with our customer service team to improve the information he was delivered. We are always working to improve the experience and any customer’s feedback is appreciated. We are taking action on the areas of AV’s experience that can be corrected, but there are several parts of his claim that I’d like to better explain.
Unfortunately fighting fraud is a tremendous burden that has several impacts not just for the bank but for the customers as we establish a relationship. For AV’s first point, the limit does go up over time and with the deeper relationship. There are several ways you can get money in the account besides our free online transfer- by pushing the money from the other account, setting up direct deposit or sending a check. We recognized that this would limit a new customer’s ability to meet the $5,000 threshold which is why we put in a 90 day grace period where you earn 2% no matter what. If we were looking to bait and switch to keep your balance captive we certainly wouldn’t have done that. We keep a small share of the interchange earned when a customer uses the card and give most of it back to the customer. It is in our best interest to make sure customers can spend as much as they want while balancing the fraud exposure to us and to the customer.
On the daily limit, I’ve worked with the customer service agent on how to better handle the situation and apologize that it was not a stellar experience.
For your last point on the check, it is clearly stated in FAQs what the hold times are but let’s face it, wading through FAQs is a pain so you naturally picked up the phone where the representative was not clear in her explanation. Again, I’ve worked on the education that she should have inquired whether you were a new customer because their is an extra hold time for the first 30 days.
Unfortunately banks have done little to engender trust so we’re fighting little by little to do better and earn that back. IM- I hope you’ll give us a shot. We aren’t perfect but I can assure we have many customers who love us. And I don’t know many other banks that have their COO writing a lengthy reply to an irate customer on a Saturday because he genuinely cares about making banking better.
Any customer or potential customer can contact me directly if they have questions or suggestions: jhenrichs -at- perkstreet.com