Received $50 bonus from HSBC
I received my $50 bonus for opening the Smart Package Checking account with them. (You had to open a Smart Checking Plus and a Money Market account.) I already had an Online Savings account so I only keep $25 in the Money Market. I’m most of the way through the process of making HSBC my primary bank. All that is really left to do is have my paychecks direct deposited into my HSBC account. Jonathan at MyMoneyBlog has a scan of an offer he received and some other info there (use code Get50 when opening the account.)
Overall I am pretty happy with HSBC. The transfer times between accounts are not that bad (3rd business day) if you time them properly. The key is to not let your money sit in limbo over the weekend. The free Bill payment service is fast and efficient and laser printed checks do not post to your account until they are cashed. Electronic transfers to credit cards and other accounts seem to happen the same day! You can also pay your HSBC credit card bills instantly by simply transfering money from your checking (or savings) account to the credit card. This is a nice contrast to Netbank which uses Checkfree for bill payment. There, the money leaves your account the day you pay the bill (whether by check or electronically) and it can take up to 5 days for payments to post to your bills’ accounts. Checkfree is making money on the float.
One thing I will miss with Netbank is their ability to integrate your other accounts right within the banking interface. HSBC allows this only for HSBC accounts but does provide a private label version of Yodlee where you can manage the rest of your accounts. Yodlee seems pretty cool but I have some privacy/security concerns and you do need to have a login separate from your banking log in.
I’ll likely keep my Netbank account around for a while. In fact I just opened a $2,000 one year CD there @ 5.01% APR in order to capture a $50 gift card. If you have a Netbank account you should be able to see the link to this in the menu at the left side of the screen (”Your Special Offers”). It requires funding from a source outside of your Netbank account to qualify for the gift card. I just pulled money from HSBC to fund the CD. The $50 gift card makes the effective APR 7.5% for this deal. Not bad.