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I was please with the ability to Zelle small amount of money out quickly with Valley Direct, but it looks like their rate is not as competitive as UFB Direct. 1/16/2024 5.05% APY, 2/21/2024 4.80% APY
Beware of transfer limits that make it near impossible to get your money if you need it quickly. You can send up to $3,500 per day and $12,500 per month.
You can receive up to $45,000 per day and up to $75,000 per month.
Only other way to get large sums is through a check that they will mail to you.
Also I believe they will not verify ownership of your account with other financial institutions if you want to connect your other bank accounts through their system to get around the limits.
I would NOT bank here if you plan on transferring larger sums of money.
I have very good credit, and 7 credit freezes going. I temp lifted Chexsystems, since that's the one Valley told me they check. When I applied, I was rejected. The email said something about "3rd Party Freeze". I literally spent/wasted an entire day dealing with this. Long story short, I temp unfroze ALL of my freezes, and tried again the next morning. Rejected again. Same reason given via email, even though I now had no active freezes. Tried calling ValleyDirect CS again, and (as usual) waited on hold for 15 minutes, and finally said, screw this.
I checked out Vio Bank, looked okay, same great rate, called CS as a test and they picked up immediately, and they were nice and helpful, so applied on their site, the process was easy, they asked me security questions (proving, I think, that my LexisNexis freeze was indeed temp unfrozen), it all worked, the two trial deposits were in my external account the next morning, and that morning I was up and running with my new Vio account and online banking. Easy, and smooth. The opposite of Valley Direct.
The couple times I spoke with Valley Direct CS (after waiting on hold for too long, IMO), they were very nice, which spurred me to keep trying, but it just wasn't worth the hassle, not when there are so many other viable options.
Opened an account in Nov.2022 with 3.5%, and they actually up that to 4% 2 months later to keep up with other competitors, which is great. Customer service is slow on responding, and there will be inactivity fee charged if there's no deposit or withdrawal within 24 months range, but that's easily avoidable.
Valley Direct was quick to call me directly when I had a problem with an ACH adding funds to my account. I got a call from 2 different customer service reps to help me through the problem even when I was going to give it a couple days to play out. The problem was with the bank I was pulling funds from. I'm not used to that kind of follow up so was surprised and grateful. I look forward to a long relationship with great rates.
hmm, this is a long process, so for the first time I want to transfer money in via ACH, I have to give them my external bank username and password through Plaid. Which I assume means I have to immediately go change my external bank password afterwards.
It takes many days, 2 days later (provided apply before 5 pm ET) to get funds out of your external account and then another 2 days before it is posted to your new Valleydirect account....and then later after your account is open, you can set up transfer now by setting up trial deposits into your external account and then manually entering them... that takes another week.... too many hoops to jump through until they can just auto fund ACH by giving them your external bank and routing #
It seems these accounts offering 2% and above have problems, either funding, or very low limits on ACH withdrawal amounts or they don't post interest monthly, some only quarterly if no activity that month, some you don't get the interest if you close before it posts, some take days to get your money and more days to post to your account, and long hold times if you are a new account, and only can reach them by phone after a 30 minute wait...and no thanks, that is why I prefer to deal with Barclays and Marcus, instead. (and earn a little less interest but safe, quick, large withdrawals, peace of mind)