CD Rates Summary September 27, 2016
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Why It’s Getting Tougher to Sue Your Bank
Fifth Bank Failure of the Year - Allied Bank in ArkansasUSAA Bank Announces the End of Its Debit Card Reward Program
A week after the Federal Reserve released its final rules on the debit card regulation, USAA Bank announced that it will be ending its debit card reward program. However, USAA Bank will be keeping its free checking account along with its ATM fee refunds. USAA Bank posted the announcement on its website in this news release:
A new federal law will significantly reduce the revenue banks receive from merchants when consumers pay with a debit card. USAA Bank has always returned the majority of this revenue to its members in the form of benefits, such as free checking, ATM fee refunds and debit rewards.
As a result of the law, USAA Bank will end its debit card rewards program Sept. 1.
The new regulation caps the debit card interchange fees that retailers pay every time you use your debit card. The regulation exempts financial institutions with assets under $10 billion. USAA Bank has $48 billion in assets so the fee caps will directly affect them. The regulation takes effect on October 1st.
USAA Bank's debit card reward program wasn't that great, so I doubt it will be missed. It only offered 0.5% cash back. For those interested in cash back rebates, they will probably be using a credit card. Since the regulation only affects debit cards, USAA Bank will continue to offer credit card cash back rewards.
According to USAA Bank, they conducted a survey to decide what to cut:
USAA's survey found that members favored free checking and ATM fee refunds over debit card rewards. Based on this feedback, we decided to stop the debit card rewards to maintain the other benefits
It's nice to see USAA Bank will be keeping its free checking along with its ATM fee refund policy which refunds up to $15 in other banks' ATM usage fees each month. The checking account will remain a good deal. Other perks that come from the free checking include mobile banking apps and Easy Deposit which allows you to deposit checks at UPS Stores around the nation. They also offer a remote deposit service called Deposit@Home, but they are still restricting this to customers who qualify for their insurance products which requires a military connection.
Thanks to reader WhataBummer who first mentioned this news in the discussion forum.
Malarkey!
Ya gotta love Karma, which is what's going to come around and bite the big banks in the arse. I would not be surprised if this move on USAA's part eventually surges them ahead of the big banks. You know people will want to withdraw from Chase, Wells Fargo, BofA, and the rest, looking for a local/community CU/bank or USAA itself.
I always use rewards cards but if I get a cash discount, I may well opt to pay cash in the future when the cash discount exceeds the reward.
"USAA's survey found that members favored free checking and ATM fee refunds over debit card rewards. Based on this feedback, we decided to stop the debit card rewards to maintain the other benefits."
I want to know who USAA talked to when conducting this "survey". They certainly didn't call me. I did not use the cash rewards option, because the author of this article was right, the cash rewards sucked. But the points program was awesome. Last year I earned enough points in 15 months, in just my regular weekly spending, to get $275 cash back. This year, I was going to be on track to probably get $350 back, because I have already earned enough in 9 months to get the same $275 back that I did last year. That is certainly a lot better than saving $15 a month in ATM's or $5 a month in service fees for checking.
Whoever voted to get rid of the rewards program obviously did not use it to the full advantage & they are stupid for voting to get rid of it. I personally like $300 back per year (especially around Christmas, which is when I was planning on using it).
My paypal card is grandfathered in at 1.5%.
And i use Chase & Discovers quarterly 5% promotions a lot.
Heck, maybe merchants start offering cash discounts. For a 2% cash discount, I will go back to paying cash for lots of things.
Ken is not a moron and 0.5% on a reward checking account is very low rate of interest.
Are you confusing the interest rate with a a cash back rewards ?
If you got $300 in a year from 0.5%, I suspect I would have made many times that going with my paypal card at 1.5% to chase & discovers 5%.
But what do cash back rewards have to do with a lousy low interest rate rewards card ?
Guess I should start paying more attention to my account disclosures.