Discover Bank Savings Account Review 2024
Yes, the same Discover that runs Discover Cards has a bank.
I’ve known about this bank for a while now but didn’t take the time to give it a full review. I’m here today to share what I know about this bank, particularly its online savings account.
Readers of this site always look for the best places to keep their emergency savings. As you know, I think high-yield online savings accounts are the best place for that. So, let’s see if Discover Bank will suit your needs.
Discover Bank High-Yield Online Savings Account
The high-yield online savings account is arguably Discover’s best offering. It’s no-nonsense savings at a great rate without fees. That’s why I will make it the focus of this review.
The savings account started being offered over ten years ago. Right now, the rate on the account is excellent, even compared to other online savings accounts.
- The account requires no minimum initial deposit.
- It’s FDIC insured, has no messy fees or minimum balance requirements,
- no fees on the first six monthly money transfers out, and
- no fees on incoming domestic and international wires.
- Outgoing wires have a fee.
You get complete online access to your account.
Deposits are always a primary concern of those entering the online savings world. And I can assure you that Discover offers free online transfers between your other connected accounts.
So, if you have a checking account, with Bank of America, for example, you’ll only need to make an online money transfer to deposit money into the account.
You can also mail in a check if you like. The address for Discover Bank deposits is PO Box 30417, Salt Lake City, UT 84130.
About Discover Bank
In 2000, the Greenwood Trust Company, in existence since 1911, became Discover Bank. In the past, they only offered an online savings account as a place to keep your liquid savings.
Since then, they opened a high-yield online savings account; they’ve gained in popularity and are now seen as a direct competitor to the other online banks in the banking industry.
Other Services of Discover Bank
Beyond the online savings account, Discover Bank offers a money market account, certificates of deposit (CDs), and an IRA CD. The money market account is pretty straightforward.
They present the money market account as if it should be used like a checking account. Before they offered the money market account, this is how they provided a good return for savers.
They offer a complete catalog of CDs (12 in total) ranging from 3 months to 10 years. Finally, the IRA CD is a great way to shelter your stable investment returns from taxes.
If you have an old 401k, you aren’t using; you could roll it over into this IRA CD without tax consequences.
The Discover Bank routing number is 031100649.
Cons
Very few cons to this simple online savings account. Of course, they don’t have physical locations. And they have higher minimum balance requirements on other products, like CDs. They also aren’t usually the highest rate these days.
Beyond that, I don’t see much difference between this offering and other banks.
Pros
Discover Bank seems committed to providing a straightforward savings account, free of stupid fees, with a solid interest rate on their savings product.
Right now, it’s one of the top high-yield savings account rates.
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My experience w/ Discover Savings was exceptionally poor. I have multiple other online accounts since early 2006 and am familiar with the process. I opened the Discover account with the $500 min to test drive the exchange. It took 8 days between opening the account and the money actually showing up at Discover! I phoned a few times while waiting. The CSRs were all very nice, and equally under-trained. I asked the same questions each time, and received a different answer from each person I spoke with.
Each CSR repeatedly assured me this extra long wait was merely because it was the initial transfer, but subsequent transfers would move much more quickly. Once my $500 posted I decided to do my own test.
Utilizing the same linked account, I made a transfer to my Discover account and 5 minutes later made a transfer to another online account. Three separate banks.
The following day my linked account and other online account both showed a pending transaction. The 2nd day showed the funds removed from the linked account & posted to the other online account.
With Discover, the money immediately disappeared from my linked account & 3 days later I am still waiting for it to post to the Discover account. It is not even listed as pending on my Discover account.
Once the funds are finally posted, I will transfer all of the money out and close the Discover account. My genuine concern is how many weeks it will take for this to happen
Opening an online savings account with Discover Bank is a mistake. I found out the hard way. They are a day or two slow in transferring money out. That hurt a little but one can live with that. There are several other minor things that are troublesome, including horrible customer service. One can live with some of these things, as long as my money is fine. The big issue came when I transferred everything out of the account on the 24th of the month. I was stunned when I didn’t get any interest for the month, 24 days in. They told me that I forfeited that when I transferred everything out. AWFUL.
I never thought I’d say this but American Express is much better. Money transfers on time, better rates, plus, they do not steal your interest money. I have learned from experience, I hope no one else suffers my fate.
I should have seen the warning signs. When I first opened the account in August 2011, Discover tried to pull the initial deposit amount ($9,000) THREE TIMES from my other bank, resulting in multiple overdraft charges of $105. When I asked my bank about this, they told me that I needed to get refunded from Discover and of course Discover told me otherwise. So basically I had to fight with both banks and then eventually closed off my original bank account (since their service was worse than Discover’s). What a mistake.
Things were going well for a while with Discover as I had a regular deposit in place. But after unacceptable delays in money transfers and having to wait almost a week for each transaction to occur, I decided to pull out from Discover and open a HSBC bank account that only takes 3 days per transfer. As I was pulling out all my money, of course Discover did what they do the best-they repeatedly tried to “transfer” money into my other account multiple times, resulting in $35 overdraft fees. When I called Discover to ask how on earth this multiple pull happened, they explained that I logged on and transferred the money multiple times myself (they even got a tech person at Discover to verify this!). This was the most insane excuse I have ever heard. And all of this mysterious ‘transfer’ that I requested all occurred after I emptied out my account. When I asked them “why would I try to make transfers from an empty account?”, they were like, “I can see that this doesn’t make sense and there must have been a mistake”. So I asked for a refund for the $35 fee they charged but they told me that was impossible.
I realized that this is how Discover penalizes people who empty out their accounts–they falsely charge you with fees based on a fake transfer that their system creates. This is the most unbelievable experience I have ever had with a bank. I truly believe that Discover bank is committing a crime through their fraudulent practices.
Ahh good to know… Wow seems like Discover may have ING beat! I’m pretty sure that rate is higher than Ally, which I thought was the current interest rate leader. If I actually had a substantial amount of cash in my savings I would consider switching! Thanks for the info!
@MyFinancialObjectives – You can have more than one account. You can actually use the initial application to set them all up. You can have as many as 5. I use this approach as well and really enjoy it.
wow is this too good to be true? That definitely better than the rate I am getting with ING right now, and I though ING were the best around. Right now I’m getting 1.10 with ING. Do you know if you can have many different accounts and attach your own label to them? It sounds silly, but its a nice little feature I enjoy:)
@Kate – Yeah, I can’t say I’ve seen them in any major publications or on TV. I think their advertising has mainly been online. But I’m sure they’ve also promoted it to their card holders as well. Right now the rate is one of the best of the online banks.
I had no idea that Discover offered a savings accoumt, it will be interesting to see how they stack up against my credit union and the other savings programs available.