Banking Reviews: Savings Square's No-Minimum Online Savings Account

Every few months another one of the United States' thousands of banks will open an online division and offer a savings account with a decent interest rate, giving the consumers more choice than ever before. Recently Kirkpatrick Bank decided to open an online division called SavnigsSquare.com which is offering no minimum savings accounts at an interest rate of 5.10%.

The terms of the Savings Square online savings account are pretty typical. There's a minimum opening deposit of $1.00 and a maximum opening deposit of $100,000. There are no monthly fees or any minimum required balance required and they deliver your monthly statements electronically. Savings Square will not perform a hard-credit pull, meaning that there will be no effect on your credit score for opening this account. The online savings account offered is FDIC insured.

Perhaps the single most compelling reason to open an account with Savings Square is that there are no limitations to the number of external checking and savings accounts you can link to. This will allow you to deposit and withdraw money to any of your accounts without much hassle. Many online savings banks limit consumers to just one or two external accounts. In addition, Savings Square allows people to deposit and withdraw money from external accounts, meaning that you can be at your local bank and transfer money to your Savings Square online savings account.

The application process is very straight forward and can all be done online. They use the CashEdge transaction system, so if you've used that at all before, the process will be very similar. The banks' website says they may request copies of documents when you open an account, so you might have to mail in a couple of things, which isn't too big of a hassle.

Unfortunately the account does not currently offer any sign-up bonus to speak off, and you won't have check-writing privileges or an ATM card to use. The account it self seems to be a reasonable and decent product, but there's no compelling reason to open an account with Savings Square over any of the other online savings banks, such as Emigrant Direct, HSBC Direct, and ING Direct. The features and interest rates can be had at other banks, and with Savings Square you're dealing with a relatively new online savings bank, so you don't know what kind of growing pains they're going to have.

If Savings Square really wants to attract more customers, they're going to have to offer a more competitive interest rate or provide another compelling reason to get people to move their savings to Savings Square..