[đź“Ś Update January, 2023 – Marcus Bank is now offering a $100 cash bonus when you open a new online savings account with $10,000 (or add $10k to an existing one). That’s essentially a 1% bonus just for signing up! Offer valid through 2/15/2023. See more below.]
You’ve surely heard of Goldman Sachs, the global investment services firm, but you might not be familiar with their digital subsidiary, Marcus.
Marcus by Goldman Sachs is an online-only, FDIC-insured bank offering personal loans, a high yield online savings account, and CDs. Named after Goldman Sachs pioneer Marcus Goldman and founded in 2016, Marcus Bank’s online savings account is regularly among the highest yielding accounts available nationwide.
To see if this account is right for you, continue reading our review below.
Online Savings Account Rate + Details
The Marcus savings account comes with zero fees and no minimum deposit requirement.
Online Savings Account Rate
| Min Deposit | APY |
| $0 | 3.30% |
To put this yield into perspective, the current average for a money market account and a savings account sit at just 0.33% APY and 0.44% APY, respectively, according to recent FDIC data.
That said, there are now a handful of FDIC-insured online banks offering above the 4.00% APY mark to start the new year.
$100 Bonus!
The $100 bonus is available to all new and existing customers that open and deposit $10,000 of new funds into an online savings account.
Here are the details:
- Enroll in a Marcus Bank online savings account.
- Deposit $10,000 of new funds to the account within 10 calendar days of opening it.
- Maintain that balance for 90 consecutive days.
You must enroll by February 15, 2023. Get started here.
How to Open and Fund Your Account
To earn the noteworthy APY you just have to fund your account within 60 days of opening it, and maintain a positive balance after that.
There are four different ways you can make a deposit into this savings account.
You can:
- 1. link your savings account to an external bank account and transfer funds (Marcus won’t charge fees for this, but your other bank might),
- 2. set up direct deposit payments from your payroll or Social Security,
- 3. send a domestic wire transfer, or
- 4. mail a check to this address – Goldman Sachs Bank USA P.O. Box 4571 Carol Stream, IL 60197-4571
Once you’ve opened the account, you can move funds about via:
- Wire transfer
- Electronic transfer
đź“Ś Important: Marcus features same day transfers from other banks to Marcus of $100,000 or less. Marcus will process transfers made through Marcus by 12 PM EST on a business day by 5 PM EST that same day. You will start earning interest from Marcus on the amount you transfer the day your request is received.
Compounding and Crediting Interest
Interest on the Marcus savings account is compounded daily and credited monthly.
Withdraws and Transactions
Per the standard and federally-enforced limit, you can make up to 6 transactions from a savings account per month for free. There is no excessive withdrawal fee, but you won’t be allowed to go over this limit. Some banks allow you to go over this limit but impose a fee for doing so.
Marcus does not offer a debit card or ATM card for their savings account, so you’ll have to transfer funds to another account if you wish to withdraw them.
Banking Experience and Customer Sentiment
There are no Marcus ATMs or in-person branches, which is typical of online banks but important to know.
There are also no Marcus ATM, debit, or credit cards, but there is the Goldman Sachs card. Goldman Sachs’ only credit card, the Apple card, had a rough start. When it first launched, the card drew heat for alleged gender discrimination in the algorithm used to assess a potential user’s credit and qualifications. With two high-profile corporations like Goldman Sachs and Apple teaming up to launch a card, this error was quickly spotted and users were turned off of the product by such an egregious glitch. But now that the media storm has mostly calmed and the issues have been addressed, the Apple card is considered a decent product for devoted Apple users.
User reviews of Marcus are about average, but the data is somewhat imprecise. This is because many users report about their experiences with the Apple card rather than with Marcus as a bank, so this leads to difficulty in condensing customer experience with the online bank. Nevertheless, the results that are in are as follows: out of 128 reviews on WalletHub, Marcus scored 3 stars out of 5. Out of 165 reviews on DepositAccounts, the bank landed, again, 3 stars. And out of 71 reviews on Trustpilot, Marcus scored about a 3.5.
When you bank 100% digitally, you always run the risk of not being able to have your problems solved in a timely manner and, in some cases, at all. Unfortunately, Marcus is no exception. Some customers have reported not being able to get in contact with customer service representatives when their accounts were temporarily and inexplicably locked and have expressed frustration with slow, unsatisfactory service.
Overall, it seems, customers are either highly satisfied or highly unsatisfied with Marcus, so this might be a case where you’ll want to see for yourself how accessible Marcus customer service is. You might try giving their help line a call before opening an account if you have any questions and see what that experience is like to get an idea of what you can expect, but of course, this isn’t a perfect measure. Customer Service can be contacted Monday through Friday from 8 am – 10 pm and Saturday to Sunday from 9 am – 7 pm ET or you can call (855) 730-7283 to get in touch with someone.
The Marcus online portal is said to be more user-friendly than most banks, which is important when you’re managing your money digitally. The app gets 4.4 stars on Google Play and 4.8 stars on Apple.