Review: StanChart JumpStart Savings Account – Definitely Sign Up (If You Can)
If anyone’s counting, this is incidentally the 3rd time I’m reviewing one of StanChart’s banking accounts. The first two didn’t fare too well, but this one is a little different, and you would want to pay attention if you are between the age of 18 to 26.
Features
Sometimes, the best things in life can be summed up very simply:
- 2% pa on up to $20,000 of savings
- No salary crediting, card spend, or any other requirement needed, aside from being 18 to 26 at the time of account opening
- Debit card with 1% cashback
- No fees
It seems like someone at Standard Chartered looked at the multitude of accounts that require salary crediting and card spending, and decided – rather accurately – that there were a category of people who couldn’t meet such requirements: young people.
2% pa rate on $20,000 is an excellent rate for something that has no lock-in period nor requirements to meet. It’s a fixed deposit with full liquidity and no fixed tenure. It’s awesome!
1% cashback card
My first personal bank account as a young working adult many, many years ago was also from Standard Chartered, and it too had a 1% cashback card. Now, this is pathetic by any measure compared to any credit card out there, but it’s par for the course as far as debit cards are concerned.
If you can qualify for a proper credit card, you don’t ever have to use this, but if this is your only option then 1% cashback is better than getting back nothing at all on your spend.
A no-brainer conclusion
If you’re of eligible age, you will definitely want to sign up for this. It doesn’t matter what your current financial circumstances are or how much or little your savings is; having an account that gives you 2% with absolutely no conditions is really good. People go to the trouble of alternating funds between bank accounts for that sort of interest.
Also, there are no fees involved, so it really is a no-brainer decision to open this account if you can do so. If you don’t ever use it, there’s zero downside for you. And if you do use it, you’d be happy to note that you can also keep it beyond age 27.
The good:
- Good interest rate of 2% pa
- No requirements to maintain the interest rate
- No fees
- Keep the account after age 27 and beyond
The bad:
- 1% cashback is a poor rate, and some may even think $20,000 is a little low, but this is really nitpicky on what is essentially an extremely useful product
The ugly:
- WHERE WAS THIS WHEN I WAS YOUNG?!
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆
9 Stars of Sethisfaction
Wow!! In your days, it was probably POSB kids (:
I think the 1% cashback on qualifying MasterCard spend is actually very good. If you look at OCBC Debit Card (https://www.ocbc.com/personal-banking/cards/ocbc-debit-card) for example, it offers you 1% unlimited cashback ONLY IF you spend at least S$500 on Visa transactions per month and only for selected categories. These categories, while quite common in our daily lives, doesn’t cover much in terms of dining outside of the fast food chains listed. Cafes, restaurants, food courts (unless you’re using a stored value card, like Kopitiam), bubble tea stores, etc.
Other places like Popular, the movies, fashion, are not covered. In that sense, StanChart’s offering trumps everything OCBC’s card offers.
The only thing StanChart loses to the Big 3 banks (DBS/POSB, UOB, OCBC) in Singapore is ubiquity. It doesn’t have to be said that ATMs and branches are scarce for the bank, and even small things like not being able to accept NETS QR (those that are not in the unified SGQR) or lack of acceptance by some town councils to use its online banking for payment for the Service & Conservancy Charges could turn people away. That is really the dilemma I have. Choose high interest rate with no strings attached and a debit card with 1% cashback for most spend, or one with low no-strings-attached interest rates but are accepted by basically every business and organisation?