Easy ~$400 Checking Account Bonus With Chime

Chime is an app with a debit card tied to an online checking account without any particularly noteworthy spending bonuses. It does have some terrific new account and referral bonuses, however.

This month, Chime has increased its ever-present Swagbucks offer and it’s now $390 (39,000 SB) on new accounts. Once the Swagbucks are credited, they can be redeemed to your PayPal account as cash via a PayPal gift card or redeemed for merchant gift cards as well. I signed-up for this offer when it was 25,000 SB last year and it was easy money.

For folks that prefer earning MyPoints, the Chime bonus there is $400 (64,600 MP), slightly better than Swagbucks and with the same deposit requirements. We’ve included a link to that below also.

The Deal

• Earn 39,000 Swagbucks (worth $390 when cashed out via PayPal) when clicking through and opening a new Chime account, then receiving two “direct deposits” of $200 or more.

Direct link to offer (SwagBucks landing page)

• Earn 64,600 MyPoints (worth ~$400 when cashed out via PayPal) when clicking through and opening a new Chime account, then receiving two “direct deposits” of $200 or more.

Direct link to offer (MyPoints landing page)

Key Terms (identical for both Swagbucks and MyPoints)

• Must complete the following steps:

1) Must be a new Chime customer. For Direct Deposit award please follow all steps below.
2) Sign up with Chime between 9/30/24 and 10/31/24 to earn 5,100 MP
3) Download the Chime App.
4) Access your new Chime account number and routing number from the app.
5) Add your Chime account number and routing number to your payroll contact or service to make payroll direct deposits into your Chime account.
6) You must have at least two (2) consecutive qualifying payroll direct deposits of at least $200 each to your Chime account to earn 59,500 MP. The first payroll direct deposit must be received within 30 days of your account signup date.*

• Other terms which are applicable:
  • Must make a minimum direct deposit of $200 to qualify.
  • The qualifying payroll direct deposits must be made by your employer, payroll provider, or benefits payer by Automated Clearing House (ACH) deposit. NOTE: Bank ACH transfers, Pay Friends transfers, verification or trial deposits from financial institutions, peer-to-peer transfers from services such as PayPal, Cash App, or Venmo, mobile check deposits, wire transfers, and cash loads or deposits are NOT qualifying payroll direct deposits
  • Offer may only be completed once per user.
  • Allow up to 70 days for SB/MyPoints to be credited to your account

Quick Thoughts

I don’t do deals that require me to actually change direct deposit information, but in most cases there are multiple options as to what the bank/service will credit as a “direct deposit.” Doctor of Credit has a very useful page listing data points of what counts as a direct deposit with Chime, and my primary bank was one whose transfers are acknowledged as DD.

The entire process takes less than five minutes and there is no hard pull.  However, this screen that pops up is worth noting:

Don’t auto-agree as the bottom two options as that will enroll you in a secured credit card that you almost surely don’t need.

For folks that already have a Chime account, DOC reports that the referral bonus might stack with this $390 bonus from Swagbucks with some lucky clicking (see this comment for more). If you are able to successfully stack the bonus and the $100 referral bonus in-household, that’s a nice $490 checking account bonus with low requirements. Note that there were some failure reports on the stack with MyPoints in the DOC comments.

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