ING Direct Electric Orange – the Checking Account that Saves Your Money
Thursday, 1 February 2007
An email from ING Direct, dated January 31, 2007, announcing the new Electric Orange checking account. It has your standard online bill pay that everyone offers, but also a number of pretty interesting and unique elements. For one, this is not an entirely paperless checking account. You can write checks from the web site that will then be mailed to the recipients, or you can send an email from the site that will allow the recipient to finalize the transaction online. It’s a very novel approach to transferring money, and I’m not sure how it will be received by people hesitant to trust online banks in the first place.
ING describes the fully-electronic check writing method as follows:
Once you review the details for accuracy and press the send button, the money will be deducted from your account and an email will be sent to your recipient. Tell them to look for it. They can then use the link within the email to go to a secure page and confirm their account information. Provided their entry matches what you initially entered, the transfer will be completed!
ING also has anticipated some reluctance to the requirement that the recipient enter their checking account number on the ING web site:
We understand the importance of security when it comes to account information. However, remind them that every time they wrote a check in the past, they were disclosing their account number, even if they didn’t realize it. It’s at the bottom of the check.
Another interesting feature of the checking account is their overdraft policy. Instead of charging a fee, they allow you to borrow the overdrawn funds and pay interest on that amount until you bring your balance back to positive numbers:
Overdraft Line of Credit. You pay interest if your balance drops below zero and you use your Overdraft Line of Credit. Unlike traditional banks, Electric Orange does not charge a fee to use your overdraft, and there’s no fee to sign up. If you use it, you will only pay interest on the amount you borrow.
The contents of the email are as follows:
It’s here! The new account from ING DIRECT that delivers the access and convenience of checking with the earning power of savings.
As an ING DIRECT Customer, you believe in saving and know we try to make it easy for you to save more without hidden fees and catches. Many of you have asked when we would do for checking what we did for savings. We have an answer! It’s called Electric Orange and it’s exclusively for you. It’s America’s first paperless checking account and you can be one of the first to have it.
Electric Orange is everything you’d expect from ING DIRECT and more:
- It pays high interest
- 5.30% APY on every dollar for balances of $100,000 or more
- 5.05% APY on balances between $50,000 and $100,000
- 3.00% APY for balances up to $50,000
- A MasterCard® Debit Card for purchases
- Free ATM access at more than 32,000 locations nationwide
- Free Bill Pay
- Send money securely to anyone for Free with Electric Checks
- With the Electric Orange Security Guarantee, you’ll have $0 liability for unauthorized purchases
(Annual percentage yields apply to your entire balance. All listed rates are variable and effective as of 11/29/06.)
Open your Electric Orange today:
- Go to ingdirect.com and login with your Customer Number and PIN,
- Click on ‘Open an Account’,
- Then click on Electric Orange (you must be logged in to your account to see it).
Getting started is that simple!
Electric Orange - the checking account that thinks all your money deserves to make money.
