Best Bank Bonuses and Promotions of March 2023

Citi® is offering up to a $2,000 cash bonus when you open a new Citi Priority Account. Like most Citi promotions, this is a tiered offer based on the amount you're able to deposit and maintain in your new checking account.

Citi recently added a lower tier to this bonus, making it easier for more people to participate. However, some of the middle tier requirements have increased. All told, the bonus amount ranges from $200 for depositing $10,000, up to the full $2,000 for depositing $300,000.

Depending on when you deposit the cash (it needs to be there by the 20th day), the bonus represents an effective rate of roughly 4-11% on your savings. The $200 offer nets you the best effective rate, but every offer is significantly more than what you can find on most savings accounts. So if you have the cash, this is a great way to put it to work, risk-free.

It's important to note that this offer is available in most, but not all states.

U.S. Bank is offering up to a $600 bonus for opening a new Smartly™ checking account.

Like previous offers, this offer is tiered; however, there's a new third tier for high income individuals. The greater your direct deposit, the more you can earn. The threshold is very steep, at $10,000 to earn the full bonus, but if you have the income, this is an easy bonus. You'll have 90 days to reach this target, but keep in mind that unlike some banks that let you hit the bonus in a single transaction, U.S. Bank requires at least two direct deposits to qualify for this promotion.

All-in-all, we consider this bonus from U.S. Bank to be quite solid. If you qualify, it's one of the highest offers available right now.

Fifth Third Bank has continued their personal checking account bonus. They've increased the offer amount slightly from $250 and halved the direct deposit requirements.

You can open the account online through the promotion's landing page, or choose instead to enter your email address to receive a unique code that you can take into your local branch.

Another perk? Users report receiving their bonus just days after the qualifying deposit is posted.

The flagship Chase checking account bonus was recently decreased from $225 down to $200. While $200 is what Chase has historically offered as a new checking account bonus, it's still a bummer to see the amount go down.

That said, Chase Total Checking® is the most popular account from one of the nation's best banks. You'll have access to more than 4,700 branch locations and 16,000 ATMs, along with a top-rated mobile app.

Your new account can be opened easily online, and earning the bonus is super straightforward: receive a qualifying direct deposit into your new account within 90 days, and Chase will reward you within 15 days.

Keep in mind that Chase Total Checking® does charge a $12 monthly maintenance fee, but there are several ways to have this waived, including maintaining a minimum daily balance of $1,500 or making at least $500 in electronic deposits each month.

Assuming you can keep the account free, we definitely recommend taking advantage of this easy cash bonus from Chase!

Albert, an online fintech banking platform, is offering a $150 welcome bonus when you open a new cash account and set up direct deposit. What's even more? Once you become a user, you can refer your friends and earn up to $1,500!

Available in 22 states plus the District of Columbia, PNC is back with a competitive welcome bonus for opening a personal checking account and using direct deposit within the first 2 months. This offer must be redeemed at the link below AND on a mobile phone to qualify.

If the $5k in direct deposit is too high, they're also running a couple of smaller offers with lower deposit requirements.

Assuming you don't have an account with PNC (and haven't within the last 90 days), we definitely recommend grabbing this easy bonus.

Recently extended, but for a slightly lower amount, SoFi is offering new and existing SoFi Checking & Savings customers up to a $250 bonus. You'll need to set up direct deposit, but you'll have until the promo ends to complete one. This is still setup as a tiered bonus, the more you direct deposit, the more you'll earn.

Truist, has a very solid offer for a new One Checking account, and $100 more than when it was previously offered. Available mostly along the East Coast and Southern states with the ability to open online, Truist is offering a $400 welcome bonus when you open a new One checking account and set up direct deposit.

BMO Harris Bank is giving you 3 months to accumulate $4,000 in direct deposits to earn a $200 welcome bonus for opening a new Smart Advantage™ or Smart Money™ checking account.

Bank of America is offering a $100 bonus for opening a new personal checking account. The offer applies to any of their Advantage Banking accounts: Bank of America SafeBalance®, Bank of America Advantage Plus®, or Bank of America Advantage Relationship®.

Previous versions of this bonus had a direct deposit requirement of just $250, but this time around Bank of America has increased the ask to $1,000. That's steep for a $100 bonus, but you do have 90 days to meet that total in cumulative deposits.

Overall, a fairly easy bonus from a nationwide bank, so worth checking out.

TD Bank is offering a $300 welcome bonus for opening a personal checking account and using direct deposit within the first 2 months. What's more, you can maximize this promo by also opening a new personal savings account — stacking an extra $200 on top of this offer for a total of $500.

If the $2,500 in direct deposit is too high, they're also running a smaller offer with only a $500 deposit requirement.

While this isn't available nationwide, it is open to a healthy list of states, and is no longer targeted to select customers.

If you're eligible, we definitely recommend claiming this easy bonus.

Citi offers a really competitive APY rate in their Citi® Accelerate Savings account, a high-yield savings product.

You can find slightly higher rates elsewhere, but nearly all of those will have balance limits. In other words, you'll earn a great rate on the first $15k, but then the rate drops considerably.

Citi, on the other hand, has no limit. So for those who have sizable savings they'd like to keep liquid, Citi® Accelerate Savings will often win out.

There's no opening deposit minimum or ongoing balance requirements, but do keep in mind that having a $0 balance for longer than 3 months could cause your account to be closed.

TD Bank is offering a $200 welcome bonus if you open a new savings account by October 31st, 2023. It works out to effectively be an interest rate of about 4% — significantly better than any savings account rates these days.

What's more, you can maximize this promo by also opening a new personal checking account — stacking an extra $300 or $150 on top of this offer for a total of up to $500.

While this isn't available nationwide, it is open to a healthy list of states, and is no longer targeted to select customers.

If you're eligible, we definitely recommend claiming this easy bonus.

Back for 2023, Alliant Credit Union has partnered with Suze Orman to encourage people to make saving a priority. To that end, they've launched “The Ultimate Opportunity Savings Account” promotion, where you can earn a $100 welcome bonus by opening a new savings account and making the commitment to deposit $100 each month.

Keep in mind that these deposits don't need to be made via direct deposit, as is common with many bank bonuses. Instead, regular transfers each month will work.

The first transfer will need to be made within 30 days of opening the account, and while it does take a full 12 months to satisfy the requirements, the ROI on your cash is impressive.

This is a nationwide bonus from one of the best credit unions, so definitely check it out!

The main draw of LifeGreen Savings is its bonus offer, which pays out up to $100 per year when you set up automated transfers (in addition to the normal APY). If you transfer at least $10 into the account per month, you'll get a 1% savings bonus at the end of the year (up to $100).

The best part of this offer is that it isn't a one-time cash back deal. LifeGreen Savings bonuses are eligible each year that the account is in good standing.

Available nationwide with the ability to open online, J.P. Morgan Wealth Management is offering up to a $700 welcome bonus when you open a new Self-Directed Investing account with qualifying minimum funding.

This is tiered bonus, meaning that the more you deposit, the more you may be eligible to earn. New for this iteration, J.P. Morgan has introduced a lower tier at $10,000, down from the previous $25,000 entry point and raised the max bonus amount!

Here are all 4 tiers of this investing bonus:

This is the highest offer that we've seen to-date from J.P. Morgan.

Several of the large online and national banks are looking to round out their product offering and capitalize on consumers' fervent interest in self-directed stock buying.

To that end, Axos is ramping up their investment platform: Axos Self-Directed, which offers commission-free trades. This competes against banking competitors Chase, Charles Schwab, and the newest Citi® Self Invest, along with online brokerages like Robinhood.

Axos is offering a $250 welcome bonus for a limited time to new customers of their Self-Directed Trading or Managed Portfolio products. The minimum deposit amount is a little higher, but so is the bonus amount.

If you already have funds invested on another platform, you can earn big when you transfer funds to an M1 Finance account.

Right now, you can earn a bonus of up to $10,000 for making the switch. This is the largest bonus they've offered to date! All you have to do is open a new account that matches the type you’re transferring from, upload some documents, and you’ll be in line for the bonus.

The total bonus that you get depends on the amount of your transfer:

• $50,000 – $249,999.99: $250
• $250,000 – $499,999.99: $1,000
• $500,000 – $999,999.99: $2,000
• $1,000,000 – $1,999,999.99: $4,000
• $2,000,000+: $10,000

What's more, if you're a new M1 Invest customer, you can stack this bonus with their new account bonus, which offers $75-$500.

Available nationwide with the ability to open online, and back for 2023, M1 Finance is offering up to a $500 welcome bonus when you open a new investment account and make an initial deposit. This is a tiered bonus, the more you deposit, the more you can earn.

What's more? You can stack this offer with the M1 Transfer (ACATS) $10,000 Bonus.

Available nationwide with the ability to open online, Tradestation is offering new customers a $150 cash bonus when you open a new securities investment account or $150 in Bitcoin when you open a new crypto trading account.

Available nationwide to new and existing customers, Citi is offering up to a $500 bonus when you add new-to-Citi funds to a Citi® Self Invest account.

As is typical with Citi promotions, this is a tiered offer: the more you add, the more you earn. You'll need to deposit at least $10,000 to earn a $100 reward, or at least $200,000 to receive the full $500.

You'll need to also maintain your funds through a date defined in the table below:

Chase Bank is offering business owners a $300 bonus to open a new Chase Business Complete Banking℠ account.

The requirements are pretty easy to meet: deposit $2,000 and maintain it for 2 months, and complete just 5 qualifying transactions in the first 3 months. Several activities count as "qualifying transactions", including purchases on your debit card, deposits into the account, setting up a bill payment, and more. See the fine print for the full list, but needless to say, meeting that requirement should be painless.

What's especially awesome about this bonus compared to other business checking account offers is that Chase recently launched the ability for customers to open an account online. Compared to the vast majority of business checking accounts which require you to visit your local branch, opening an account at Chase is significantly more convenient.

If you prefer live help, however, you can still enroll in this offer by entering your email address on the bonus landing page to have an offer code sent to you. Just be sure to take that code with you when you visit a branch.

U.S. Bank is offering a $500 welcome bonus when you open and fund a new business checking account. To earn the $500 just deposit $3,000 in your new checking account and enroll in business online banking. This offer has increased since the last time it was offered, so now might be a great time to jump on it if you've been considering U.S. Bank for your business banking needs.

Keep in mind that this promotion is only available nationwide to customers who already have a relationship with U.S. Bank. If you don't, you'll need to live in one of the 26 states in which they operate: AZ, AR, CA, CO, ID, IL, IN, IA, KS, KY, MN, MO, MT, NE, NV, NM, NC, ND, OH, OR, SD, TN, UT, WA, WI, WY

Available nationwide, Live Oak Bank is offering up to a $300 welcome bonus when you open a new small business checking account and a small business savings account with qualifying activities. You get to choose whether you complete either the savings or checking account offer for $150 each or go for both in one swoop for the $300 total.

Available nationwide with the ability to open online, Axos is offering a $200 welcome bonus when you open a new Business Interest Checking account and maintain a minimum balance. This is double their previous offer so now might be a good time to jump on it!

It's important to note that only new businesses (those incorporated after 06/01/2020) are eligible for $200 and must use promo code NEWBIZ200. If your business is older than that, you'll only be eligible for a $100 bonus and must use promocode NEWAXOSBIZ.

PNC is running a couple of welcome bonus offers targeting small business owners. For this one, you'll need to open either a Business Checking or Business Checking Plus account and then meet balance and debit card requirements.

This is a straightforward, nationally-available bonus for business owners.

If your company has higher balances or transaction volume, PNC is running a larger bonus for their enterprise checking accounts, so check those out, too!

Truist Bank is offering small business owners one of the easiest business checking account bonuses we've seen to date: $300 for depositing $1,500 into your new account. (Well, you'll also have to enroll and sign-in to online banking, but we don't really consider that as much of a hurdle...). This is up from $200 when it was most recently offered.

The Truist Simple Business Checking account has no monthly fee and comes with 50 free transactions each month – in other words, it's perfect for a small business just starting out. If your company has surpassed these thresholds, Truist offers their Dynamic Business Checking account. That one comes with higher limits, but does have a small (and avoidable) maintenance fee.

Keep in mind that you'll have 30 days to complete both requirements, and that your new account will need to remain open for 6 months in order to avoid forfeiting the bonus.

Huntington is offering a welcome bonus to those opening new business checking accounts. This one offers $1,000 for a $20,000 deposit. Don't have $20k? They're also running $100 and $400 offers for $2,000 and $5,000 deposits, respectively.

While the account needs to remain open for 6 months to avoid forfeiting the offer, you will get the bonus within 2 weeks of meeting the requirement which is pretty great!

Available in select states within their footprint, BMO Harris is offering up to a $400 welcome bonus when you open a new business checking account and meet the minimum balance requirements. This is a tiered bonus, the higher the balance, the more you can earn. It's worth noting that this bonus is not quite as high as a recent one offered for the same tiers.