$200 Bonus for Business and Personal Checking Account at Bank of America

Bank of America is offering $100 for opening a business checking account. Another $100 is available for opeing a personal checking account. The offer is good through July 15, 2006. Here's the promo link. Credit for finding this deal goes to this FW thread. According to this thread, this $200 deal is not available in the states of California, Idaho and Washington.

There are two issues to worry about when opening accounts at Bank of America. The first is a hard credit pull which has been reported to occur if you don't already have a personal account with them.

The other issue with Bank of America is fees. Most of their accounts have monthly maintenance fees unless you meet balance requirements or have direct deposit.

According to this promo's small print, the monthly maintenance fees will be waived on the small business checking account if you chose the Advantage Checking personal account and keep this opened. You can still get a business checking account with no monthly fee for two years with the MyAccess Checking account. Monthly fees on the MyAccess Checking account can be avoided with direct deposit. Refer to this FW thread for info about using ACH transfers in place of direct deposit.

If you use a debit card for your purchases, you might also want to consider Bank of America's Keep the Change program which requires both a personal checking and savings account. Refer to this post for more info on this program. Last month I reported on a $125 checking/savings account bonus at Bank of America. $25 of the bonus was for opening a savings account.