The full article continues below these offers from our partners.

An Online Checking Account With an Unusually High Rate

To earn the highest available return on your savings, you usually have to stash your cash in a top-paying CD. Or sometimes a stellar high-yield savings account can get you close to the tip-top rate. Regular checking accounts, on the other hand, usually pay little to nothing.

The best high-yield checking accounts pay more but usually require you to make a lot of debit card transactions. For instance, La Capitol Federal Credit Union pays 6.25%, but only if you make 15 debit transactions each month. In addition, these accounts almost always stipulate a maximum balance on which you can earn the high-yield rate, such as La Capitol's $10,000 cap.

That's what makes Primis Bank's Premium Checking account so surprising. Not only does it offer an astonishing 4.50% annual percentage yield (APY), but it has no debit card or direct deposit requirements. And you can earn the high APY on any balance—there's no minimum and also no cap on the interest you can earn.

A Slew of Attractive Features Enhance Primis' Rate

Wondering whether this offer is so good because on the flip side it charges a lot of fees? Believe it or not, we have good news there, too. In fact, the account offers quite a long list of customer-friendly features:

• A low required opening balance of just $1
  
• No monthly account fees or service charges
• No minimum balance requirement, and no balance cap to earn the high APY
  
• No overdraft fees
• No monthly transaction limits
• Early direct deposit, which can credit your account up to two days early
• Free ATM usage nationwide
• One free pack of Primis checks (upon request)
• Free incoming wires

Primis vs. a High-Yield Savings Account: Which Should You Choose?

You can indeed earn a little bit more with other savings accounts. Our daily ranking of the best high-yield savings rates includes a dozen accounts that pay 4.75% to 5.00% APY. But that extra margin of interest is not especially significant unless you're holding an exceptionally large balance. In addition, if some of the features offered by the Primis Premium Checking account are useful to you, then giving up that small increment in APY could be very well worth it.

Another option is to open two Primis accounts: a Premium Checking for the account benefits and features it offers and a Primis Savings Account, which currently pays a slightly better 4.70% APY. The difference in Primis' checking and savings rates is fairly minor, so if you're the kind of person who likes to keep all your surplus cash in checking, then the Primis Premium Checking account is at least a high-paying option.

But if you do better with socking away your extra funds in a separate savings account, you can do this either with an outside account, where you can earn as much as 5.00% APY, or with the Primis Savings Account, where you won't earn the tip-top savings rate but will have the convenience of instant transfers between your Primis savings and checking accounts.

Checking and Savings Rates Will Likely Fall in 2025, So Consider Putting Some Cash in a CD

If you have more cash than you need for the coming months, or for a year or longer, it's a smart time to consider one of today's best nationwide CDs. That's because the Federal Reserve is expected to lower interest rates next week, and then likely make one or more additional rate cuts in 2025. This will push savings and checking account rates lower—meaning, the 4.50% you can earn from Primis today is unlikely to be available next year.

A certificate of deposit, however, lets you lock in one of today's rates with a guarantee for some number of months or years down the road. And the sooner you lock in one of these rates the better, since each Fed rate cut will push future rates lower. Right now you can guarantee 5.00% to 5.50% until the summer, or rates in the mid-4% range for a year, two years, or even as long as 2029.

How We Find the Best Savings and CD Rates

Every business day, Investopedia tracks the rate data of more than 200 banks and credit unions that offer CDs and savings accounts to customers nationwide and determines daily rankings of the top-paying accounts. To qualify for our lists, the institution must be federally insured (FDIC for banks, NCUA for credit unions), and the account's minimum initial deposit must not exceed $25,000. It also cannot specify a maximum deposit amount that's below $5,000.

Banks must be available in at least 40 states to qualify as nationally available. And while some credit unions require you to donate to a specific charity or association to become a member if you don't meet other eligibility criteria (e.g., you don't live in a certain area or work in a certain kind of job), we exclude credit unions whose donation requirement is $40 or more. For more about how we choose the best rates, read our full methodology.