Whats the catch with ING Direct?
ING Direct is able to offer better rates because they are an online-only bank, and so don’t have the expenses associated with maintaining physical locations. There are other online-only banks as well. In addition to online banks, I believe you can have accounts at traditional banks that don’t even have a physical location near you. Different options are available to be researched at http://www.bankrate.com/. I first read about ING Direct in a book by Christian author Mary Hunt, whose website is http://www.debtproofliving.com/. In order to start an account with ING Direct, you have to have an account with a physical bank, from which your opening deposit will be transferred. There is no minimum opening deposit requirement, other than the fact you have to put some money into an account to open it, obviously, but they don’t specify how much that has to be. The directions on
