Link: Bank of America – Keep the Change

Have you heard about this Keep the Change program from Bank of America? From their web site:

Automatic Savings

When you enroll in Keep the Change, you don’t even have to think about saving. We’ll round up every Bank of America Visa® Check Card purchase to the nearest dollar and transfer the difference from your checking to your savings – automatically – for free.It’s that simple.

I don’t even have to think about saving! Well thank goodness. I hate saving and planning for the future.

Let’s be clear here. They’re not giving you money. When you make a purchase for $5.25 on your card, they’re not giving you 75¢. It’s not free money. They’re charging you $6.00 and then refunding you the 75¢.

I suppose it’s nice that the transaction is rounded nicely to the nearest dollar, but with a debit or credit card, who really cares what it comes out to?

The ace in the hole for the bank would seem to be that they get to charge the merchant a percentage of $6 instead of a percentage of $5.25. Since BoA makes a small percent of the total charge from the merchant, it should increase BoA’s revenues some.

Sorry, Bank of America. I’m not falling for it. I’m sure there are plenty of Americans that will think this is a terrific way to save money, but if they did some research, they’d find they’re better off making a lump deposit into an ING Direct savings account every month. Of course, that takes discipline.

ps. Have fun reconciling a bunch of $.74, $1.19, $1.08, $.12, $.44, $.09, $.66 deposits every month when you get your statement.