I recently transitioned all of my day-to-day banking to a Chase account. Chase is a current account app offered in the UK by JP Morgan Chase & Co, and acts in much the way any new digital banking app does.
Note: it also is available in the US, but it is slightly different. This article only covers the UK version as this is the one that I have access to therefore the only one I can actually recommend.
Why Chase?
There are so many ‘modern’ banks in the space that it feels saturated – so why would I pick Chase as opposed to Monzo, Starling, or Revolut?
I think mostly it is personal preference, so in this blog post I’ll list the reasons I like it and leave it up to you whether these are good enough reasons for you to choose it. For me I do find simplicity key – Chase doesn’t try to be anything other then a banking app, but what it does, it is good at.
Each ‘space’ in the app acts as a bank account
Each space you create to store money in the app is created with individual account numbers and sort codes. You may think this makes everything harder, but it can be exceedingly useful if you want to put money straight into a space or someone pays you, but you don’t want the money to be mixed with the money available on your card or other money in your account. You could have one account number for friends and one for your pay check to go into – the possibilities are pretty large.
For me, I find it useful when I’m transferring money to myself from other bank accounts – I can pay directly into my saving space and never see the money available on my card. This is pretty useful for standing orders and automation.
You can hide spaces
Being able to keep spaces out of my sight makes banking and budgeting a lot easier.
I hide spaces of money that I am saving or don’t want to use and when I take a quick look at my banking app the money held here isn’t immediately visible. This can help a lot with not spending money that I want to save, as if I don’t see it when I open the app I can trick myself into thinking it doesn’t really exist.
1% cashback on purchases for a year
As a sign-up bonus Chase offer 1% cashback on all purchases for a year which is quite a nice little bonus. All the regular expenditure on food adds up and before you know it, you actually have a small sum to buy something for yourself or just to help a bit more with the increasing cost of living.
Round up with 5% interest
Quite a lot of bank cards offer the ability to round up your purchases. Chase can round up all your payments (to the nearest pound) and put them into a 5% interest savings space which after a year moves back into one of your main spaces. This is a quick and easy way to do a little bit of saving, and it is surprising how quick it can add up without you noticing.
I like that I can turn it on and forget and then a year later I’ll have a little sum of money to either move to savings or to buy a gift for myself.
Easy access savings with 2.1% interest
One of the options when you are creating spaces for money is ‘savings’ or ‘spending’ – the savings space comes with a 2.1% interest base rate which is quite nice for money which you haven’t made a decision what to do with.
Although 2.1% is not high for savings, and you’ll likely want to move it into a proper savings account if you are thinking of storing it long term, the savings space can act as a halfway-house between your spending account and your savings.
You may then decide that you need the money in the short-term so all you have to do is move it out of your savings space into the spending section – and hopefully you’ll have made a little bit on the interest to offset some of inflation.