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HSBC just added a couple of new account opening bonuses for their checking and savings accounts. If you are planning to open a new account at HSBC, you can take the chance to earn some free money.

Get $25 for opening a new HSBC Interest Checking Account. This promotion can be found at the homepage of HSBC website. You can get $25 bonus if you open a new HSBC Interest Checking Account and deposit at least $2,000 new money in this account. This offer ends June 15, 2008.

HSBC Interest Checking Account features:

• It’s free if you sign up for direct deposit
• Free Personal Internet Banking with Bill Pay
• HSBC Debit MasterCard® with PayPass™ Discounted rates on HSBC’s Home Equity Line of Choice^SM and
  Home Equity Loans
• Discounted rates on personal loans
• Bonus rates on CDs
• Free first order of selected styles of paper checks

Get $50 for opening a Premium Money Market Plus Savings Account with a qualifying deposit. If you open a new HSBC Premium Money Market Plus Savings Account with $1,500 new money by July 31, 2008, you can be rewarded by a $50 bonus.

Get $25 for opening a new Regular Savings Account with qualifying deposit. If you open a new HSBC Regular Savings Account with $500 new money and sign up for automatic transfer, you can get $25 bonus. This offer ends on July 31, 2008.

The promotion page can be found here at HSBC website. Last time when I mentioned HSBC promotion was in February when HSBC was offering $75 for a new Interest Checking Account, $50 for a new Premium Money Market Plus Savings Account, and $25 for a new Regular Savings Account. It seems HSBC will offer certain amount of sign-up bonus now and then and it’s good for out customers.

Nowadays there are many online banks offering all kinds of banking services like: checking accounts, savings accounts, money market accounts and certificate of deposits (CDs). You might be quite familiar with some of them as they are advertising all the time. However, you might also have never heard of some of them. The later sometimes may even offer better interest rates than other well-known banking institutions. Before you start your relationship with a new bank, you have to do a little bit research about the new bank. You have to make sure that the bank is insured by FDIC and have been in banking business for many years.

Following online banking institutions as recommended here provide good customer support and offer competitive rates.

1. ING Direct

I should admit that ING is not always offering best interest rate in banking industry but they are a very good online bank to deal with. Right now, their ING Orange Savings Account is still offering 3.00% APY. I choose ING as the NO 1 online bank just because of how easy they make everything. I can easily transfer any amount in and out of my account at ING. The online banking interface is also very intuitive. You can also easily refer your friends to open a new account there and both of you can get bonus. Current APY is 3.00%. (Frankly speaking, interest rate is not the most important factor when the rates only differ by 0.5%.)

2. Washington Mutual

This is my another favorite bank by far. If you open a free checking account together with an online savings account, you can get 3.30% APY. With WaMu, you can get free checks for life, cash back on your debit card purchases, free ATM withdraws, free outgoing wire transfers worldwide and most importantly, no monthly fees! Yes, WaMu is so good! You can use their online banking service without any worry. The free of fees, convenience and high yield interest make WaMu checking/savings combination a top choice for all of you.

3. HSBC Direct

If you are not comfortable with WaMu, you can consider HSBC Direct banking as another option. HSBC direct is rated as the Best Overall Online Bank by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance in 2006. HSBC currently offer a very competitive interest rate ~ 3.05% APY. Their service is completely online. You can transfer you money in and out of your current banking accounts for free. Their customer support is also very helpful. However, if you have an account at ING, I really doubt whether you will open another account at HSBC. Of course, if you have an account at HSBC, I will also doubt whether you will open another one at ING. Sometimes, once you have  a high-yield savings  account,  you really don’t need to open another one. HSBC is offering  $75 sign-up bonus through May 31, 2008 (here).

4. E*Trade

E*Trade, known as a discount online broker, is also a very competitive online bank. E*Trade only provides Complete Savings Account and Money Market Account. The reason why I put E*Trade here is you can link your banking account with your brokerage account at E*Trade  and instantly transfer funds between the two accounts. This feature enables you to transfer your funds between a savings account and brokerage account immediately. In this way, you don’t have to wait for several days until an ACH transfer completes.

Of course, there are other online banks provide great service and competitive rates. You can also consider CapitalOne Direct Banking, WT Direct, AmTrust and Emigrant Direct. They also offer great interest rates but other than that you can’t expect more. This post is open to all of you, please feel free to list your top online banking institutions.

Recently HSBC has just releases some banking bonuses (including checking and savings accounts) which are good through 02/29/2008.

$75 bonus for opening an HSBC interest checking account with qualified deposit—Minimum $3,000 initial deposit is required to receive the bonus. This account requires minimum$3,000 daily balance to avoid monthly fees.

$50 bonus for opening an HSBC premium money market plus account—Minimum $3,000 initial deposit is required to receive the bonus. There is no minimum balance required on this account. There is no minimum balance required on this account.

$25 bonus for opening an HSBC regular savings account—Minimum $500 initial deposit is required to receive the bonus. You can choose to open either a regular savings account or a student savings account. In addition, you have to authorize automatic transfer of $10 or more from your HSBC checking account to your HSBC savings account. There is a $100 minimum balance to earn interest on this account.

The bonus will be credited to your account within 6~8 weeks.

How to open an account at HSBC?

You can apply online via the bonus links, visit any HSBC branch or call 866-257-3209 to apply by phone.

HSBC is offering $25 for their customers. All you have to do is to use Bill Pay to make three bill payments through your online payment account by January 31, 2008. If you qualify, the $25 bonus will be directly credited to your account in about 6-8 weeks. Although the bonus is not so sweet as Chase, it’s just extra money for the account holders of HSBC. Click here to start paying your bills.

HSBC is still offerring their sign-up bonus for new customers. The deal is ending on Sep 30, 2007. So I put it here for those who want to take the last chance.

You have two choices. Open an HSBC Interest Checking Account and receive a $75 bonus. Or open a Free Checking Account with an HSBC Debit MasterCard with PayPass, you’ll receive $25 bonus. In order to qualify for $75 offer, you must open an Interest Checking Account with an initial deposit of $3,000 of new money. While you can get $25 for free, no direct deposit required! No minimum balance required! No monthly maintenance fees applied! See here.

Today I am writing about 2% cash back card from HSBC bank. There are two sub-banks from HSBC—Household Bank and Orchard Bank. The two banks issue the 2% cash back card separately. As we can see, most credit cards give up to 1% cash back except for certain purchase. However, the 2% cash back card can give you straight 2% cash back on everything. If you can manage your cards, i.e. use different cards to at certain place, you can get the maximum cash back. You can redeem $25 once your cash reward is higher than $25. The drawback is you can only get $25 even though you have $25.05 cash reward. But it doesn’t matter. You can use them as long as you want to keep them. I should mention that it seems that HH and Orchard are offering credit cards for bad credit. If you have a very good credit history, it’s quite possible that you can’t get the offer.

Following is the link for Orchard issued credit card application links:

https://www.hsbcapply.com/start/orchardbank

In fact this is the pre-application process. After you submit your application information, you can see the offers from the Orchard 2% cash back card. usually you will get: 1. offered card with 2% cash back and without an annual fee; 2. offered card with 2% and with an annual fee; 3. offered card without 2% cash back and annual fee; 4. offered card without 2% and with an annual fee. In some cases, you can get 0% Apr on purchase promotion. I should point out that the first step is not a hard pull in your credit report. It a soft pull. (I have confirmed by myself—I have 20 soft inquiries on Experian from HSBC). Go ahead and try your luck!

Emm… Le’s talk about the credit card from Household Bank.

You can get the similar result from Household Bank by following the link: https://www.hsbcapply.com/start/householdbank?hbpath&

Usually the HH and Orchard will send out invitations by mail. I got the invitation from HH in July and by inoutting th information at www.acceptourcard.com/master or www.acceptourcard.com/visa you will get instantly result. Don’t expect to get high credit limit from HH and Orchard. Even though you have >$10,000 credit limit on other cards, you can still get $750 credit limit from those two cards. It seems they are managed by space monkeys, right??? I got the HH card in July. Then in Auguest, I got the no annual fee with 2% cash back offer from Orchard when I was playing the pre-approve process. But when I submitted the application, I got denied! The reason was I have already got the maxium cards from HSBC! Oh, man! I got only one card! Then back to the middle of Aug, somebody said they got the invitation from HH with the visa version of the 2% cash back card (all I mentioined above is mastercard) and got the card immediately! If we are lucky, we can get the visa version! But who knows!