Chime is one of the many small finance / banking apps with a checking account bonus. They are out with a new referral bonus that will require reading this post for detail about how to get the best deal and pocket $500 in two-player mode or perhaps more than $800 if you’re able to stack to the max.
The Deal
Chime is offering a limited-time bonus when you open a new account through a referral link whereby you can earn $100-$200 when you open a new account and receive a payroll direct deposit of $200 or more within the first 45 days (there are many ways to trigger the direct deposit requirement). Note that the offer you see when clicking through may depend on your browswer (read on in this post for more details if you don’t see a $200 offer after clicking through). Note that if you stack this in two-player mode and refer your significant other, this should make for a pretty easy $500 (or possibly more).- Chime is offering a $100 bonus when you open a new checking account through a referral link and receive a direct deposit of $200 or more within 45 days of account opening
- Chime referral link
Quick Thoughts
Update 9/11/23: The rest of this post is remaining for historical information, but the new account holder bonus is now only $100 in all browsers.
I opened an account for a bonus a while back and then I saw a Doctor of Credit post about the new referral bonus of $200 for new account holders. This is very low-hanging fruit because the new account bonus only requires $200 in direct deposits in the first 45 days There are a lot of things that have worked for people besides traditional direct deposits. For instance, when I opened my account a couple of years ago, I cashed out $201 from my Dosh account to Chime and it triggered the direct deposit requirement. Given the very low direct deposit requirement here, it should be very easy for most people to trigger the bonus. There are no ongoing account minimums to worry about to keep the account fee-free.
DoC reports that the referral bonus might stack with a $155 bonus from Swagbucks with some lucky clicking (see this comment for more). If you are able to successfully stack the Swagbucks bonus and the $200 bonus, that’s a nice $355 checking account bonus with low requirements. Note that MyPoints is offering an even higher bonus of about $182, but there were some failure reports on the stack with MyPoints in the comments at Doctor of Credit.
If you’re playing in two-player mode, at a base level, you can earn an easy $500:
- Player 1 signs up through a referral for the $200 offer outlined below
- Player 1 refers Player 2 and earns a $100 referral bonus
- Player 2 signs up through Player 1’s referral for the $200 offer outlined below
If you are also able to stack that with the Swagbucks, it would make for a total of more than $800. I want to be clear that the Swagbucks stack is a YMMV situation that I haven’t done. You’ll have to read the comment linked above for details on that stack.
But beyond the easy cash in the bank, I also wanted to write about this bonus to highlight something really weird about it: the $200 bonus you can receive for opening the account through a referral link depends on the browser you use to open the referral link.
When I saw the post on Doctor of Credit, I opened my Chime app and within the app it says that my friend and I can each earn a bonus of just $100 (not the $200 I had expected). When I scrolled the comments at Doctor of Credit, I found that the “trick” lies in which browser you use to open the referral link.
For instance, to get a screen shot for this post, I first opened my referral link in Firefox and I only saw a bonus of $100 for the friend opening an account.
I then made the rounds through some browsers installed on my computer. In Chrome, I saw a bonus of $150 for a friend who signs up.
In Microsoft Edge, the bonus was $175.
Then I tried the Vivaldi browser. Bingo! I saw the $200 bonus.
I also checked in the Opera and Cake browsers on my phone and both showed $150, but the DuckDuckGo browser showed the $200 bonus.
I repeated the same steps with my wife’s referral link and got the same results.
Note that all of these were opened in the normal browser modes (I didn’t try incognito or private browsing of any sort) and all from the same IP address (my laptop is currently connected to the Internet through my phone as a hotspot).
Update: Reader Mark reports in the comments that he opened the link repeatedly in a Firefox Private browser and found each of the offers above (including the $200 offer) and another reader reported doing the same in Chrome’s incognito function, so you might try one of those private browsing modes before installing a new browser.
I wanted to bring all of this up because we sometimes see variance like this when it comes to credit card offers (so it is always worth trying a link in different browsers and/or on different devices, especially if you hear reports of higher targeted offers than whatever you are seeing). I have not seen this type of situation before for a bank bonus.
All of the above is to say that if you click through my link or you go to refer Player 2 and you do not see the $200 offer, try again with another browser. Knowing how easy it was to get the $200 offer to populate, I wouldn’t settle for a lesser offer on this account.
Overall, this account is easy money. Account bonuses like these can be great for some extra spending cash, but I like to look at small bonuses like these as cash reserves with which to buy points when a hotel or airline program sells points cheaply — I can kind of mentally account for the bonus in terms of points it will buy me.
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Looks like Chime wants to give me a Visa credit card after the $200 deposit. Will Chime do a hard pull on my credit and more importantly, will the Visa Chime CC count against 5/24? I don’t think I saw (unless I missed it) any of this mentioned in the post (above).
These are important details.
I just clicked on the link in Chrome, got the $100 offer from Tyler and immediately Rakuten offered $50 back.
I am using the referral posted in the article for a manual credit of the bonus.
The referral’s name is tyler daviskean but the support team is asking for the email of this person. Can this person provide it?
Alternatively, if anyone want to provide his referral and email, i am happy to give his name to chime support for the bonus
@Nick Reyes
not sure if you can help
Same thing for me. Were you able to resolve this and if so, how??
I was! I immediately reached out to them when I opened the account, and when a real DD hit I recontacted them and got a manual credit. Be sure to have screenshots of the offer
Thanks! They gave me a $100 bonus instead of $200. I did the same, I even sent them screenshots and an email confirmation of the $200 referral bonus, but they are asking me for the referrer’s name and email address. I used the same link on this page which belongs to someone named Tyler but I don’t have an email for him.
Was very easy to find the $200. I opened the link in Chrome and saw $150. I deleted cookies and all site data which prompted me to reload the page. I saw $175. Repeated the previous step, reloaded the page and saw $200.
I’ve tried chrome, edge, and safari. Multiple times clearing cookies, as well as incognito/private. Only $100 showing up every time. Probably 30 attempts. Not even seeing $150 or $175.
Same, cannot get anything other than $100. Chrome, Firefox, Opera on PC, chrome / firefox on android wifi, android cellular data. If anyone has higher than $100 on 9/13 or later, let a bro know
I got it to show up on Opera. Offer was less on Vivaldi, Safari and Chrome. I clicked the link and it was credited to Tim. Way to go team. Appreciate the info.
[…] 9/7/23: Referral bonus is now up to $200 for the new member (and the referrer gets $100). (FM reports you might have to try the referral link in a few browsers to find the $200 offer.) NO […]
I tried different browsers and incognito on desktop but the highest offer was $175. When I tried incognito on phone I finally got the $200 offer.
I already have a Chime account. Can we open multiple Chime accounts?
Is it stackable with Rakuten $50 cashback?
Is your referral link still good? It gives me an error message on every browser mode I have tried, then takes me to Frequent Miler home page.
Whoops! That’s fixed now.
Anyone have a referral link?
They have their link in the post above.
You don’t have to switch browsers to see different results. I opened the link repeatedly in Firefox in private mode. Every time it was different: 100, 150, 175, or 200.
Pretty much ditto for me. I did not see 175 but I did see 125 and all the others.
That’s a great tip. On my iPhone I opened the link in incognito and then just kept hitting refresh until the $200 offered showed up. On my laptop it was a bit harder: I had to keep opening a new incognito window in Chrome in order to get a different offer each time and it took many tries, but eventually I got it.
I have an account from a couple of years ago that I forgot to close. Can I close it and apply again?
Actually I opened it in 2014
When going through this, I *almost* accidentally signed up for a secured visa credit card which would have made me very sad. There’s two checkboxes on an “I agree” page and they are sandwiched between things you need to agree to and an “I agree to all” option.
They got me with that trick a couple years ago was so pissed.
P1 & P2, have our existing Chime accounts still open from doing similar bonus in 2021. Anyway to do this again – close existing accounts and open new ones? Is there a closure and/or wait period between accounts?
I have the same question, but only P1 has an account.
Doesn’t look like you’re eligible if you’ve previously had a checking account. See #2 in T&C:
Terms and Conditions: In order for the referring Chime member (“Referrer”) to qualify and receive the $100.00 referral reward and $10.00 temporary SpotMe Bonus Limit increase, and for the referred person (“Referred”) to qualify and receive the $100.00 referral reward, all of the following conditions must be satisfied: (1) Referrer meets SpotMe eligibility requirements and is part of the SpotMe Referral Incentive referral reward campaign; (2) Referred has not previously opened a Chime Checking Account (“Account”); (3) Referred opened a new Account between January 1, 2023 and December 31, 2023; (4) Referred opened the new Account using the Referrer’s unique referral link; (5) Referred received in the new Account a Qualifying Direct Deposit within 45 calendar days of opening the Account; and 6) Referred activated their physical Chime Visa Debit Card within 14 days of receiving a Qualifying Direct Deposit. A Qualifying Direct Deposit is a deposit of $200.00 or more by Automated Clearing House (“ACH”) that comes from your employer, payroll provider, gig economy payer, or benefits payer OR a deposit by Original Credit Transaction (OCT) from your gig economy payer. Bank ACH transfers, Pay Anyone transfers, verification or trial deposits from financial institutions, peer to peer transfers from services such as PayPal, Cash App, or Venmo, mobile check deposits, cash loads or deposits, one-time direct deposits, such as tax refunds and other similar transactions, and any deposit to which Chime deems to not be legitimate are not Qualifying Direct Deposits.