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Review |
Published: May 11, 2023 Updated: April 8, 2024 |
Raisin GmbH is a fintech company headquartered in Germany that has been providing an online savings marketplace in Europe since 2012. In 2021, Raisin expanded to the U.S. marketplace with SaveBetter.com. On June 19, 2023 the U.S. site SaveBetter was rebranded as Raisin to align with the global brand. Raisin currently has partnerships with over 45 federally insured banks and credit unions in the U.S.
Bottom Line Up Front: Raisin offers very high savings rates and functions like an older online savings account with slow transfers and none of the new features that other fintech companies have made so popular.
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Savings Marketplace
Opening a new account in the Raisin.com marketplace can be done online in less than 5 minutes. First you will have to select one partner bank account to start with. All the current partner products are listed under 3 tabs: savings, high-yield CDs (Certificate of Deposit), and no penalty CDs. Each tab defaults to listing products in order by highest APY. You can also enter your deposit amount at the top of the table, and the webpage will display the calculated Annualized Earnings for each product. The CD tabs list product maturity term in months. Each product also has a link to the full product terms as a pdf document that you can easily save or print. You can sort the products by maturity or APY, but you can't filter results.
Once you have selected a product to start with, you will enter personal information to open your account. There is no connection to third-party apps like Google or Facebook so you must create your account with an email address and password. Once your Raisin account is setup, you will be prompted to fund it from one of your pre-existing external bank accounts. Keep in mind that you can only have one external bank account linked to Raisin and you will need to wait 60 days after the initial deposit before you change the linked account. Raisin will place a two business day hold on new funds deposited, but you will still accrue interest during the hold.
Interest accrues daily and is paid monthly. You can see total interest accrued but not yet paid for the current month. If you withdraw all funds from an account before accrued interest has been credited to your balance, the accrued interest will be credited to your balance on the first business day of the next month.
Functionality and Features
After your first account is setup, you can always search other products and open new accounts. The account overview page lists all of your current Raisin products on one screen. There is also a historical tab to see your past Raisin accounts. Clicking each account will take you to the account details page where you can see the current balance, available balance, APY, interest accrued and transaction history.
The Deposit/withdraw button allows you to setup ACH transfers to or from your linked external account. Deposits and withdrawals are completed in 1 to 3 business days. Oddly, Raisin doesn’t allow you to make transfers between partner products and has no checking accounts. Only ACH transfers with the linked external account are supported at this time. There is no ATM access, no direct deposit, no cash deposit, and no mobile check deposit.
Partner Banks and Credit Unions
Raisin currently partners with over 45 small community banks and credit unions. All the products offered on Raisin.com are available nationwide. If you choose a credit union account through Raisin, there will be no membership fees and you will only need to sign a membership agreement. Savings products from credit unions behave much the same as those from banks. Credit unions may use different terms such as dividend instead of interest, share account instead of savings, and share certificate instead of certificate of deposit (CD). You have FDIC insurance for banks and NCUA insurance for credit unions when you open accounts through Raisin. This means up to $250,000 is safe in an individual account, and $500,000 in a joint account.
Joint Accounts
Raisin makes it very easy to open joint accounts. You can either create your account as a joint account or add a joint account holder later. However, joint account holders will have limited permissions. Primary account holders can add or change the linked external bank account, deposit, and withdraw funds. Secondary account holders can only make withdrawals at this time.
CDs
CDs usually offer a higher savings rate for a fixed term but come with a penalty for early withdrawal prior to the term maturity. Also, CDs usually have a high minimum deposit to open. Raisin offers options to help you with the typical drawbacks for CDs. First, you only need $1 to fund any Raisin account and that includes all CDs listed in the marketplace. Secondly, Raisin offers more flexible no-penalty CDs that allow early withdrawals. The full product terms for each product are available as a pdf document that you can easily save or print. The highest CD rates currently offered are 5.30% APY.
Customer Service required for simple changes
Raisin has a detailed FAQ section and a customer service chat bot that seems to work well. However, you will need to call customer service to make any updates to your account including name, address, phone, email, and password. This may be an inconvenience especially with their customer service phone number only being answered Monday to Friday from 9:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. ET.
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