ING Raises Electric Orange Checking Rate

ING is now offering 4.0% annual interest (or more) on your checking account, up from from 3.0% when the product was first released. Sounds like free money to me!

ING still only offers Electric Orange Checking to Orange Savings customers, but one can open a savings account today and a checking account tomorrow.

The idea of online, interest-bearing checking is pretty cool, and I grabbed an account for myself and recently received my ING debit card. In fact, I would use it as my primary checking account if I didn’t want to maintain an active relationship with my local credit union for future loan purposes. Everything’s free, with direct deposit I don’t go to the bank much anyway, and if I need to deposit a check I can still mail it in.

The only check I write each month is my rent, which I can have mailed to my landlord first-class for no charge. ING does charge for expediated shipping for paper checks.

There’s only one catch I can see with totally online checking — cash deposits. I haven’t read the details as to whether ING’s ATM network will accept them; I imagine eventually they will. Still, if I just had a big garage sale and have $2,000 cash in my hand, the comfort of physically taking it to the bank and watching a teller count it will be missing.

I do, however, plan to use my ING account as a new checking account for my additional income projects. Any income I generate outside of my salary I will deposit into my ING checking account and, likewise, use it to pay for “business expenses”. Not that I anticipate making enough to worry about tax consequences anytime soon, but you never know…

If you’re interested, get going with ING now.