Chase is paying customers up to three thousand dollars to open accounts. The same Chase that charges thirty-five dollars when your checking account goes negative by twelve cents. The same Chase that makes you call a phone tree designed by someone who hates human speech. That Chase.
The offer stacks bonuses across checking, savings, and credit cards. You open a checking account. You get money. You open a savings account. You get more money. You apply for a credit card. You get even more money. It's like a financial advent calendar except instead of chocolate you get the privilege of letting a megabank use your deposits to fund commercial real estate loans in tertiary markets.
The promotional materials mention "other account benefits." That phrase does heavy lifting. Benefits like the ability to wire money for thirty dollars. Benefits like speaking to a customer service representative after a forty-minute hold where the same jazz loop plays until you question your will to live. Benefits like receiving promotional emails every single day until you die or change your address to a PO box in rural Montana.
Retail traders will see three thousand dollars and sprint to Chase faster than they chased that biotech stock their cousin mentioned at Thanksgiving. They'll open all the accounts. They'll meet all the requirements. They'll wait for the bonus to hit. Then they'll immediately withdraw it and put the entire amount into a leveraged ETF that tracks semiconductor futures. Six weeks later they'll be back at Chase asking why they got charged a monthly maintenance fee.
The technical analysis on this promotion is simple. Chase has forty-eight million customers and annual revenue north of ninety billion dollars. They're not offering three grand because they respect you. They're offering it because the lifetime value of a checking account customer who keeps a balance and uses a debit card justifies the upfront cost. You're not getting a deal. You're getting acquired.
Photo by Frugal Flyer on Unsplash
Leave a Comment