I’ve been a big fan of ING Direct since I was first introduced to them way back in 2005. With their higher interest rates, ability to open specific savings accounts and overall ease of use, it’s been a great experience over the past 7 years.
But there’s always been one kind of drag on them – the ability to get money in to your accounts.
Because they have no real physical locations (except for a handful of cafes across the country), if you ever needed to go to an ATM to get or deposit money, you couldn’t. Sure, they partner with Allpoint for no-fee ATM withdrawals at places like 7-11 and CVS, but if and when you ever got a check, you’d have to mail it in to deposit.
Thanks to the fact that they’ve done some mobile app development to create the ability to do mobile check deposit, that’s all changed.
ING Direct – at least for me, and I’m sure for many other folks – has always been a secondary account, where you hold your savings accounts and maybe have an Electric Orange account for light use. Money has always gone into a primary checking account, with automatic transfers via ACH to an ING account.
But now that you can deposit a check via your phone or scanner, there’s almost no reason not to make ING’s Electric Orange your primary account.
You can:
- use an Electric Orange account as your main checking account
- set up multiple Orange Savings accounts as your specific savings funds
- connect direct deposit for your paycheck
- bill-pay and transfer money on your phone or online
- deposit checks via smartphone or scanner
- get cash out via an Allpoint ATM (they even have an app just for finding network ATMs)
It’s everything you need. And a big reason I’m thinking about dropping Bank of America to go with ING as my primary account.
