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National City Bank is still in trouble and the stock price is bouncing around $3 per share recently. Wachovia Bank is acquired by Wells Fargo some days ago following WaMu’s step. Some expect that National City Bank is the next one. But, the good news is, National City Bank is trying to offer checking account bonus to attract more new customers.

I previously reported that National City was offering $163 for opening a new Work Perks Checking Account in local National City Bank branch. And this promotion was said to be “the best promotion I have seen in my 4 years here at National City” by a National City Bank branch manager. At local National City Branch I could still see the banner about this promotion with $163 bonus. If you haven’t had a checking account with National City Bank, it’s a great time to open one with direct deposit.

Some may worry that National City Bank will fail or be acquired by other banks. Actually, the bank failure will only affect the account owners with deposit higher than $100K. Because the amount higher than $100K is not covered by FDIC. Otherwise, for account owners will less than $100K at a bank, the bank failure essentially has nothing to do with you. After take over by FDIC, the bank is still under operation as usual until the bank find a new owner. So I personally think for account owners with less than $100K money at a bank, you are worry-free.

This new promotion is an online special offer. The promotion page can be found at www.nationalcity.com/cash. When you open a new checking account with direct deposit before October 22, 2008, you will be awarded with $150 bonus. The minimum initial deposit is required to be $50.

Some additional requirements:

• Have a direct deposit to your checking account of $250 or more and a Visa® CheckCard* issued to you within 60 days of account opening.
• Your account must be open to receive the bonus.
• Limit of one bonus per household and available only to households without an existing National City checking account.
• $150 bonus will be credited to your account within 60 days after all conditions have been met. ($150 credit is subject to 1099 reporting.)
• Offer cannot be combined with any other offer and may be withdrawn at any time.

National City checking accounts feature:

• Unlimited transactions
• Free Visa® CheckCard*
• Free Online Banking
• Free Online Bill Payment
• Personal savings account (with no monthly maintenance
• fee and no minimum balance)
• Free online statements
• Free banking rewards program – points from National City®

Because National City Bank only has business available in the Midwest, this offer is only available to residents at Midwest states.

Hurry up and take the chance to get $150!

The subprime crisis has decimated large financial institutions and has ultimately transformed the current financial services market. WaMu was acquired by Chase, Wachoiva was taken by Wells Fargo, AIG is taken over by US government, and Lehman Brothers & Co filed bankruptcy.  National City is also in trouble now. However, one company that has withstood this market turbulence has been PNC Financial Services. (PNC is America’s 11th largest bank by deposits.)

I think you would be surprised to hear that only 2% of PNC’s $143 billion in assets is tied to subprime mortgages. So I think it’s OK to jump PNC’s checking account bonus right now. At least, we don’t have to worry whether this bank will be taken over by FDIC or not.

I reported that PNC offered $100 bonus in July 2008. The $100 bonus sign up page has been changed to the $75 sign up bonus page (link). This $75 bonus is given to new customers to PNC Bank with qualified direct deposit and open a personal checking account between Oct 6 and 18.

The fine print has specific requirement for the direct deposit (PayPal and ING will not work.):

The payout of $75 will be credited to the eligible account within 7 days of the first Direct Deposit, which must occur before 12/31/08. The payout will be identified as “Direct Deposit Reward” on your monthly statement. A qualifying Direct Deposit is defined as a Direct Deposit of a paycheck, pension, Social Security or other regular monthly income electronically deposited into a Free, Performance or Performance Select Checking account. The minimum amount of any single Direct Deposit must be at least $500. The Direct Deposits must be made by an employer or an outside agency. Transfers from one account to another or deposits made at a branch or ATM do not qualify as Direct Deposits. Offer available to new PNC Bank Checking account customers only. Offer may be extended, modified or discontinued at any time and may vary by market.

There are 3 kinds of checking accounts to choose from: Free Checking, Performance Checking, and Performance Select Checking Account. I strongly suggest you open a Free Checking Account to get the $100 bonus offer. The free checking account features:

• No minimum balance and no monthly service charge
• Non-PNC ATM fees reimbursed with a $2,000 average monthly balance
• Free transactions at any PNC Bank ATM
• Free PNC Bank Visa^® Check Card
• Free Visa Extras Rewards Program when you enroll your check card
• Free Online Banking and Bill Pay

There is no hard pull during the account opening process.

PNC is also running a visa card promotion. Any time you use your PNC Bank Visa Card for qualifying purchases between October 1 and December 31, 2008, you’re automatically entered to win a weekly prize of $500 or the grand prize of $20,000.

Please be advised that a “Qualifying Purchase” is any signature-based purchase, Internet purchase, phone or mail-order purchase, bill payment, or small dollar purchase for which you are not required to sign, made with a PNC Bank Visa Card, which is processed through the Visa U.S.A. Inc. payment system.

Any PNC visa check card, visa credit card, business visa credit card is qualified to enter the promotion.

Everyone is very familiar with eBay, the largest online auction and shopping website. You choose the products you want at eBay and bid for them. If you pay the highest price, you will win the bidding and the products will be shipped to you. Now, the new website MoneyAisle.com promises similar benefits to people looking for the best interest rates for their long- or short-term savings or CDs.

The philosophy behind the moneyaisle.com is very simple. They attract more than 100 banks from all over the country and set up the automatic bidding system according to the operation requirements of each bank. And then all of the banks will wait for the money appears and bid to offer a better, higher rate for consumers.

Sounded very interesting, so I tried it out. At the first step, I tell the bidder how much money I have—$100,000. And then tell them my zip code and then the bidding started automatically. All you have to do is waiting before the computer and wait for the winning bidder comes out. After several rounds of bidding, only one bank left and offered a rate of 3.8% APY. It seems that all of the bidding banks are FDIC insured. There is nothing to worry about if my fund is under $100,000.

The only question remained is whether the rate is the best. So I went to visit the bankrate.com to find out the highest rate available for $100,000. Guess what? The highest interest rate I can get for the $100,000 is 3.5% APY. So it seems that the MoneyAisle could really bring higher rate for me.

The MoneyAisle is based on the automated software engine was developed by neoSaej, the company in Burlington, Mass. Each bank can adjust this software, based on goals or market conditions or their own operation rules. A hundred banks may bid in the first round, 70 in the second round, 30 in the third, until the bank with the highest offer wins the auction. If two banks offer the same final rate, the software randomly picks a winner. The winning bank pays a fee to neoSaej only if it acquires the customer.

The business model of MoneyAisle lets me think of the lendingtree.com, the other website that offer bidding system for mortgage and loan companies to offer customers the lowest rate.

If you are on the market shopping for a better rate, you can try to use the MoneyAisle. It’s free right now.

As I pointed out in my post “How can Wall Street Crisis Affect Main Street“, the number one result is we will see more banking promotions. And this is true. Most banks have to attract more customers to deposit money in their institutions to meet the requirement from FDIC.

$25 bonus from Citi Ultimate Savings Account

Citibank has a $25 bonus for opening its Ultimate Savings Account with a minimum initial deposit of $1,000. To get the bonus, you have to apply online or via phone call at 877-695-9400 with the promotion code CYA8. The $1,000 initial deposit must have to be maintained in the account for 3 months before the $25 bonus deposited to your account.

The promotion page can be found here. You should remember that:

• This offer is only available for first-time Citibank deposit account customers
• $25 bonus will be credited to your account within 120 days
• This bonus payment will be reported to the IRS as interest earned in the year credited
• NO hard pull any longer for opening a deposit account at Citibank

As a reminder, Citi has a very low ACH outbound transfer limit: $2,000 per day and $10,000 per month.

$50 bonus for opening a Capital One Online Savings Account

The $50 bonus for opening a Capital One Online Savings Account can be found here. Capital One always gives out sign up bonus for this savings account but the typical amount is $25. So I personally think this is a good catch if you want to open a savings account at Capital One.

To get the $50 bonus, you have to open an online savings account at www.capitalonedirect.com/osa1 with promotion code: BONUS50 before 10/31/2008. Of course, you have to fund this account with $25,000 within 30 days of account opening. The bonus code must be provided at the time of the application. The $50 interest credit will be deposited to your account 4-8 weeks after 11/30/2008.

This account has a very competitive rate of 3.55% APY for balance over $10,000. So far there is no nagetive reports about Capital One.

When you need cash and want to apply for a loan, you probably will think of the banks, credit unions, private loan lenders or even credit cards. Actually, there are other kinds of lending services that can help you get a loan—social lending. Social lending, or person-to-person lending, or peer-to-peer lending (or P2P lending), is a certain breed of financial transaction which occurs directly between individuals without the participation of a traditional financial institution like a bank, a loan company etc. This model connects borrowers with lenders through an auction-like process in which the lender willing to provide the lowest interest rate “wins” the borrower’s loan.

The most famous and popular P2P lending companies are: Prosper, Lending Club, Virgin Money, Green Note and Fynanz (primarily focuses on student loans). However, I just noticed that there is a new company participated in the social lending club just on October 1, 2008. The name of the new P2P lending service is loanio. The launch of loanio was first reported in July 2007. However, it takes about more than 1 year for them to prepare the lending service to US consumers.

In general, Loanio is an auction based, peer lending platform where individuals can borrow or lend money to each other. By cutting out “traditional lenders,” and adding an auction based element, borrowers can get lower rates and lenders can get higher returns than other banking options.

The major difference between Loanio and other social lending services is Loanio introduces the concept of co-borrowers. It’s just a co-signer on a loan. It makes the loans less risky for the lender to take and also makes the loans easy to get funded. Loanio also offers enhanced pre-verification process which allows borrows to boost their credibility by submitting the following documentation in advance of posting their listing:

• Photo ID
• Income documentation
• Bank account statement
• Employment documentation
• Postal address documentation

Loanio also offers longer loan terms—up to 5 years.

Current interest rates are generally low. If you have some free money to invest, I would strongly suggest you try some P2P lending services. Sometimes you can get as high as 15% APR!

It seems there is a new banking promotion out there with $100 sign up bonus from Bank of America. Bank of American was offering $100 bonus for its MyAccess Checking Accout for a very long time. But then in late 2007, all the $100 bonus offers are gone. And we can only have $75 promotion codes available until the very recent promotion code. I can’t find anything about the $100 offer but this was very popular on the internet and I was informed by one of MyCardBlog readers.

Last time I mentioned the $100 offer from Bank of America was back in September 2007. After that, all we can see is the $75 bonus offer. The lastest promotion was said to offer $100 sign up bonus for opening a new MyAccess Checking Account with minimum $25 deposit. The promotion code is WGSUOISI808.

The MyAccess Checking Account is the most popular checking account product offered by Bank of Amerca. The MyAccess Checking Account features:

• Free with no direct deposit requirement
• Free Online Banking service with free Bill Pay
• No minimum balance required

The promotioin link can be found here. Although everything is branded with the University of Iowa, you don’t need to be a University of Iowa alumni to qualify for this offer. All you have to do is to proceed to open an account online and put the pormotion code on the application page. $100 cash bonus will be credited to account within 90 days. You must be a new customer with no checking accounts closed in last 3 months to qualify for this offer. This offer expires 10/15/2008

Please also note that the initial deposit can be funded with a credit card! And it will not counted as cash advance for the credit card but just a regular purchase.

It seems the promotion is targeted to many Bank of America partners. You can find the similar offer with NASCAR and I Love New York. You can’t find anywhere that mentions about the $100 offer, but you can put the promotion code on your application page. Yor are advised to save a screenshot for your application page.

The Keep the Change program is still valid to Bank of America customers. All you have to do is to open a checking account together with a savings account and use your Bank of America check card. It would be a great chance to get $250 bonus!

Warning: Bank of America will do a hard pull for opening a checking account online.

I believe the most surprising news today is the failure of WaMu. On Thursday, Washington Mutual Inc was closed by the U.S. government and all the assets were sold to JPMorgan Chase & Co for $1.9 billion. What a shock! This would be the biggest bank failure in US history. The largest US savings and loan will be out of US banking history in the future with more than 100 years’ history.

WaMu was one of the hardest hit banks by the housing bust and credit crisis. Although the WaMu is taken over by FDIC, all customers should expect business as usual on Friday, and all depositors are fully protected. Note that most bank failures are released on Friday, giving it the weekend to go through the books and enable them to reopen smoothly the following Monday. This time, the news is leaked from the media.

The transaction means JPMorgan Chase & Co will now have 5,410 branches in 23 U.S. states from coast to coast, as well as the largest U.S. credit card business. This means the JPMorgan Chase & Co will be the largest credit card issuer in US. At the same time, JPMorgan Chase & Co will past Bank of America and becomes the second largest bank in US just behind Citigroup. If Bank of America completes its purchase of Merrill Lynch & Co, then Bank of America will the nation’s largest bank.

Obviously,  the WaMu’s collapse is the latest of a series of takeovers and outright failures that have changed the American financial situation. Think about this: government takeovers of mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the insurer American International Group; bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc; JPMorgan Chase & Co’s purchase of Bear Stearns; the unknown future of Merill Lynch. The question remains: Who will be the next?

The full coverage of the WaMu failure can be found here.

There are not many credit card promotions out there but as you might discover that there are many banking sign up bonus opportunities recently. Today one of MyCardBlog.com readers sent me a link which offers up to $500 free gas for opening a checking account with direct deposit. I was shocked and wanted to share this huge promotion to many of you (This promotion is only available at many states.).

The Flagstar Bank is offering up to $500 free gas card for opening a new checking account with direct deposit. However, this is not the offer that you can redeem your $500 gas card all at a time. Instead, you can only get $25 each month and it takes 1 year and 7 months to get the $500 gas cards. Some details about this promotion can be found at www.flagstar.com/gasoffer.

Banking requirements for the $500 gas card:

• Open a primary checking account with an automatic, recurring direct deposit of income of at least $250 per month.
• Direct deposit must be established within first 60 days of account opening to be eligible.
• Minimum opening deposit is $50.
• All accounts must remain open and active for a minimum of six months.
• Offer is limited to new customers only.

How to get the $500 gas card?

As a pointed out, the redemption process takes about 19 months to get the $500 gas cards. Basically, you have to mail your receipts (>$100) to get a $25 gas voucher each month. But it’s still a good offer since you can save $25 on gas each month.

To take advantage of the offer, you have to register at www.freegasward.com which operates the promotion. After completing the registration process, you can print out your fist gas voucher which can be used immediately. Then you have to make a minimum monthly purchase of $100.00 in gasoline each month and mail the original receipts (not photocopies, or receipts collected on the same day) with your redemption voucher to: Free Gas, 14100 Walsingham Rd., Suite 36, Largo, Florida 33774.

You can only select one brand of gasoline and collect the receipts from that brand of gasoline. Receipts from other brand will be voided.

The details of the promotion can also be found at local Flagstar Bank branches.

Flagstar is the largest publicly traded savings bank headquartered in the Midwest United States (Troy, MI). The bank currently operates 171 banking centers (as of September 2008) in Michigan, Indiana and Georgia. The website of this bank is www.flagstar.com.