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finder.com’s rating: 4.5 / 5.0
★★★★★
Simple — a free bank account designed for budgeting and saving — will be shutting down soon. Check out Chime if you’re interested in an alternative.
$0 per month
Fee
0.30%
APY
$0
Minimum deposit to open
APY | 0.30% with a Protected Goals Account. Otherwise, 0.00% |
---|---|
Fee | $0 per month |
Minimum deposit to open | $0 |
ATMs | 40,000 AllPoint ATMs in Simple’s network |
ATM transaction fee | $0 |
Out-of-network ATM fee | $0 |
Overdraft fee | $0 |
Nonsufficient funds fee | $0 |
Review by
Katia Iervasi is a staff writer who hails from Australia and now calls New York home. Her writing and analysis has been featured on sites like Forbes, Best Company and Financial Advisor around the world. Armed with a BA in Communication and a journalistic eye for detail, she navigates insurance and finance topics for Finder, so you can splash your cash smartly (and be a pro when the subject pops up at dinner parties).
But if you want to earn the 0.3% APY, you’ll need to open a separate Protected Goals Account. Otherwise, you’ll earn 0.00%.
Simple will be shutting down soon, per a statement released on January 7. If you’re a current Simple user, this isn’t a cause for alarm. You’ll still be able to use your account and receive your stimulus check, unemployment benefits and other direct deposits as usual.
A good alternative to Simple is Chime, which offers free overdraft protection, early paychecks and an optional savings account that earns 0.5% APY.
Sign up in minutes online:
To open a checking account with Simple, you must be:
The application will ask for your:
Ryan Brinks
Assistant Publisher
I was excited about using Simple for a few months until they unexpectedly froze my account for more than a month without even notifying me, claiming that they needed more identity verification documents than what I provided months earlier when I opened the account. Unfortunately, it took them several weeks to even review the additional documents after I sent them in, and it was a mess to change all the automatic payments I had set up. You see, it’s important to me to keep track of where my money is going and when my bills are coming due, and I hadn’t found a personal finance website or app that showed me clearly what my future cash flow would look like … until Simple. It showed me what expenses were up next and automatically allocated my checking account balance to cover those bills ahead of time. With a quick glance, I could see where I was at for the month ahead.
Needless to say, that cool feature quickly took a back seat to the lack of trust I now have in Simple. To its credit, the company did apologize and reimburse me for two returned payment fees I incurred while my money sat locked up.
Simple will be shutting its doors soon, but the account has these benefits:
Dip your Simple Visa Debit Card into any one of the 40,000 AllPoint ATMs across the country to withdraw up to $500 every 24 hours. They’re free to use, and you can typically find them in Walmart, Walgreens, Costco, Dunkin’, Target, Hess, CVS and Safeway stores, as well as BBVA bank branches.
If you choose to use ATMs outside the AllPoint network, Simple won’t charge a fee but the ATM operator might.
If you prefer a high-yield checking account that doesn’t require the opening of a separate account, you’ll want to keep looking. As always, compare your options when choosing a checking account.
The minimum opening deposit is $0. To earn the APY, you’ll need to open a Protected Goals Account. Balances in your Simple checking account only earn 0.00% APY.
The bank is built on simplicity, offering only one checking account. Simple also offers a Protected Goals savings account that you can activate through your checking account.
No. There’s a single checking account, and it’s designed for personal use.
★★★★★ — Excellent
★★★★★ — Good
★★★★★ — Average
★★★★★ — Subpar
★★★★★ — Poor
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