Incentives for setting up direct deposit

🏗️ Building Neo
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With the new system that offers more cashback based on how much is deposited, I find it interesting that Neo doesn’t have an incentive for setting up and keeping direct deposit. Every other bank seems to have some kind of incentives for setting up direct deposits with them.

For example, Wealthsimple offers a 0.5% interest rate boost when people direct deposit at least $2,000 into a Cash account in a 30-day period (up to a total maximum interest rate of 4.25%) and a $100 direct deposit bonus when users direct deposit $2,000 or more into a Cash account within a 30-day period, for a total of 3 consecutive months.

KOHO offers Essential for $0** when you set up Direct Deposit or load $1000 per month

Big banks have generous sign up offers that require users to set up direct deposits with them.

Offers associated with minimum balance are direct deposit are not the same. Most people have a limited number of direct deposits they can set up as most people only have one job, maybe 2. Offers associated with direct deposits force users to choose where their pay goes to. If they choose to transfer it elsewhere or pay off other institutions credit cards, they still have to use the app where their pay is deposited every time they get paid.

I have my direct deposit with Neo because I want Neo to succeed, but it would make more sense for me to switch it to others where I would get an interest rate boost, or a free iPad.

Without a way to incentivize users to deposit their pay into Neo, it must be very challenging for the company to grow AUM.

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Speaking of this. Now I remember why I switched my paycheck to Wealthsimple…:sweat_smile:

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@Paul @futandrew this fits in nicely with the feedback we’re trying to get about direct deposits and PAD setup in this other post: We Need Your Feedback: Direct Deposits & Pre-Authorized Debits - #11 by zaria.godenir

In addition to wanting to make DD and PAD set up easier for customers, we want to reward customers for doing it too.

What kind of incentives would you be most interested in? I see a lot of big banks offering large one time bonuses (like $100 from Wealthsimple, $300 from TD, or the free iPads), but for me personally, I’d rather see rewards paid out in the long term through higher interest rates or better cash back.

Let me know what kind of incentives would get you the most excited!

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There are two kinds of relevant incentives here:
• incentives to get users to switch
• incentives to get users to stay

In general, I think that the best apps are the ones that are so good that you don’t have to bribe users into using them. Users ultimately pay for any monetary incentive a company can provide.

What would be exciting to see is better technology, e.g. ability to choose your payday or pay frequency, or get early pay (see Revolut on-demand pay as an example). Other tech-enabled features could be something like generating a proof of employment/income with one tap instead of getting in slowly and manually by going through HR / corporate helpdesk.