Banks were earlier known for their safety and hence were extensively relied on but now, the times have changed and they have got pretty risky. There are plenty of banks in America which give their clients runaround while disclosing the banking fees. Federal Reserve terms say that the banks have to maintain complete transparency for their bank fees but still the banks continue to treat their customers evasively if they request for the banking fees. This evasive bank treatment has previously been reported by non profit organization called US PIRG and it works for consumer welfare. US PIRG conducted a survey involving 392 financial institutions which include the credit unions and banks. All the institutions are distributed in 21 states in the US and this survey also included one dozen online  [...]

Among the several changes running in the banking industry, installing mobile banking software happens to be one of the major investments amongst banks of all volumes. Mobile phones are now all time companion of every man and are an essential tool of our daily life. Every function that we perform in our daily life somehow touches this medium of communication. The mobile phones have actually revolutionized the way humans lead their life, in 21st century. With the advent of the mobile phone technology the businesses concerns have also shown a deep interest in it. A horde of services that were offered to us previously are now being provided trough mobile phones, so that we don’t miss those services while we are on our way.  Mobile banking is among those wonderful services which allow us to  [...]

If you are a Smartypig customer, you must be disappointed to see that the interest rate on your account has been slashed yet again. The online savings bank famous for their higher interest rates has cut rates for a second time in four months, and it has plummeted from 1.75% to 1.35%. That possibly means that Smartypig is no longer the star of the high-yields savings account it formerly was, but officials are still not perturbed by the flight of a few customers due to the rate cuts, perhaps indicating that more cuts are a possibility in the future. They are now neck and neck with other high yield savings accounts. But can Smartypig really be considered a high yield savings account anymore? They are level pegging with American Express and Sallie Mae, but that’s not saying a lot about them.  [...]

Online brokerages and trading companies are something that has interested me for some time now. After all, if I am going to avail of the services of a brokerage, why pay any more than I have to? With ING Sharebuilder, the costs of using an online brokerage drops considerably and it lifts all conventional barriers to investing that some others might consider to be in place. The problem with most online brokerages I looked at was the minimum investment. Frankly said, it was a stumbling block. I was not willing to put in $500 as a minimum. It’s not that I didn’t have it; I just wasn’t keen to put that much in to begin with. What if I were buying into a dud? I’d much rather keep the amount small since this was a dry run of sorts before I fully okayed the online brokerage and the extra  [...]

The First National Bank of Omaha (FNBO for short) has a range of offerings, one of which is the FNBO Direct account. FNBO is a subsidiary of the First National of Nebraska and as of today it is the single largest privately owned bank in the United States. It was founded way back in 1850 and opened its doors to the public in 1857 by a collection of Iowan settlers, and since then FNBO has never looked back. FNBO has also been a trailblazer in driving women into the workforce. FNBO Direct is but one of the options that FNBO offers by way of services and the bank has a rich tradition of firsts to its name. Back in 1913, the First National Bank of Omaha was quick to institute a “Ladies Department” that was manned (pardon the bad pun) entirely by women. Right from the tellers to the bankers,  [...]

Some say that Millennium Bank is too good to be true, and that there must be something shady or wrong about because it just seems too good on paper. The high-flying bank can claim to have CD’s on their books with rates twice that of the market norm. They have assets in hand worth more than $50 billion. Indeed, the Millennium Bank has created quite the buzz and the inquisition by Matt Goldstein has only served to make a tricky issue even trickier. There has been a lot been said about Millennium Bank, both positive and negative. Goldstein’s methodology of analysis itself has been called into question, with many saying that it was very unfair to pit the rates offered by an offshore bank to that offered by an American bank. Indeed, it is true that offshore banks will always offer higher  [...]

If you've been looking around for a high interest savings back account, look no further than a Dollar Savings Direct account. If you've been looking around for high interest savings offers, you might have stumble upon Dollar Savings Direct. And in case you (like us) are wondering what it's all about, allow us to fill you in with the details. For the longest time imaginable since it was established, Dollar Savings Direct has been working under the asupices of its more well known (and in many circles maligned) cousins Emigrant Direct and Emigrant Savings Bank. A little more than a year ago, Dollar Savings Direct was known as Banco Fortuna. That's because Dollar Savings Direct was interested in making deep inroads into the Hispanic and Latino market and thus it had a more Spanish name. Banco  [...]

If your credit score is in the region of 720 or more, I think you would have been flooded with offers and preapprovals to take 0 apr credit cards from some credit card company or the other. Most of these offers boast the fact that they have 0% annual percentage rates on new purchases and balance transfers and they offer this for a period as long as 21 months. These offers for 0 apr credit cards are expected to become increasingly common as delinquency rates drop still further. It has already dropped from the 26% it was a year ago and it continues to fall all the time. In an effort to boost it even further, credit card companies are doing everything short of giving away the card and paying you to use it. A staggeringly high 71% of credit card mail offers rock bottom introductory APR's on  [...]

Nobody likes meltdown's, especially not a kid with an ice cream cone on a warm summers day. But nobody likes it especially when it has a lot to do with the world's monetary system melting down into nothingness. This is the endgame right here for the dollar, it seems to be that the US dollar will not be the reserve currency of choice for the world much longer, but the most surprising bit is that a large slice of investors and policy makers are largely unaware of what the dollar losing its reserve status means for the world and for them. As a round of quantitative easing looms large and as questions abound as to how the long dollar will last as a reserve currency. That, coupled with the fact that the US is aggressively pursuing options of easing the burden on its creaking economic machinery,  [...]