The Chase bonus has not landed. Start by counting to 15.

Fifteen days, counted from the moment you finish every requirement: that is the payout deadline Chase prints in plain language on its Total Checking offer page, and almost no offer prints one at all. Before you assume anything has gone wrong, work out whether that deadline has actually passed.

Below is every published failure mode for the $400 bonus, each with the exact sentence from Chase’s own offer page that creates it. Some mean you are early, some are fixable, and one or two mean the bonus was never coming.

Chase Total Checking bonus$400 for $1,000 of direct deposits in 90 days · Worth it Read the full Chase guide →

The two-minute check, in order

1. Has it been 15 days since your deposits crossed $1,000? If not, nothing is wrong yet. This is the answer for most people.
2. Were the deposits the right kind? Payroll and government benefits count. Money you pushed in yourself, and Zelle, do not.
3. Did the total reach $1,000 inside 90 days of offer enrollment? It is a total, not one deposit, and the clock starts at enrollment.
4. Were you eligible on day one? Existing Chase checking customers and recent closures are excluded.
5. Was the account open and unrestricted when payment was due? Closing early forfeits a bonus you had earned.
6. Did it already arrive, labelled as something else? It lands in the new account and is treated as interest.

Which one caught you, and what to do

Nothing wrong, keep waiting 1. You are simply too early

This is the most common answer, so start here. Chase writes:

The clock begins when you completed all the requirements, which for most people means the day the running total of qualifying direct deposits reached $1,000.

What to do: find the deposit that pushed the total to $1,000 or more, write that date down, and count 15 days forward. If that date is still in the future, nothing is wrong yet.

A summary line elsewhere on the same page says the same thing more briskly:

Two clocks, running one after the other: up to 90 days to get the deposits in, then up to 15 days for Chase to pay. Finish the $1,000 on day 88 and you should not expect the money on day 89.

Fixable if the window is open 2. The deposits were not the right kind

Chase’s definition is narrow and it is printed in full:

Money you push into the account yourself, from your old bank, a brokerage, or through Zelle, looks exactly like a deposit on your statement, and for this bonus it is worth nothing, because it did not come from your employer or the government. The test is the sender, not the size: a $1,500 transfer from your own savings fails, a $260 benefit payment passes. Micro-deposits, the tiny test amounts sent when you link an outside account, are named and ruled out too.

• A transfer from your own savings, which fails the definition$1,500
• A benefit payment from the government, which passes it$260

Bars drawn to the size of each deposit. The larger one is the one that counts for nothing, because the test is the sender.

What to do: if your 90 days have not closed, route real payroll or a real benefit payment into the account. If the window has closed, it is not fixable.

Check the arithmetic 3. The total did not reach $1,000, or not inside 90 days

The headline requirement is one sentence, and both halves of it get misread:

Chase says direct deposits totaling $1,000 or more. That is a total, not a single deposit: four paychecks of $260 clear the bar just as well as one deposit of $1,040, provided each one is the right kind.

The window is 90 days of offer enrollment, not 90 days from account opening or from your first deposit. Chase says enrollment, and on this page it does not tell you which calendar day that was. If your enrollment date is earlier than you assumed, your 90 days closed earlier too.

What to do: ask Chase, in writing, for the offer enrollment date on your account, then see where the running total of qualifying deposits stood on day 90. That one date decides whether you have a late payment or a missed window.

Never coming 4. You were never eligible

Chase publishes its exclusions clearly, and if one of them describes you, the money was never on its way:

That one sentence excludes existing Chase checking customers, anyone whose Chase account closed within the last 90 days, and anyone whose account closed with a negative balance in the last three years.

Then there is the repeat-bonus rule, which catches the organised:

The two years run from the last offer enrollment date, not from the date the previous bonus was paid. Someone who collected a Chase checking bonus twenty months ago is still inside the exclusion.

And one more, quoted because it exists, not because we can explain it:

Chase does not define what that means on this page, and we are not going to define it either. If you were told your account was ineligible and none of the exclusions above fits you, that sentence is the one to ask Chase about by name.

What to do: if a named exclusion clearly describes you, stop; there is no appeal written into these terms. If none describes you and Chase still says you were ineligible, ask which sentence it is relying on.

Earned then lost 5. The account was closed or restricted when payment was due

Chase attaches a condition to the moment of payment, not just to the moment of qualifying:

A closed account is usually your own decision. A restricted one may not be. Chase does not spell out on this page what causes a restriction or how long one lasts, so we will not pretend to know. A hold placed on the account during your 15-day window can cost you the bonus, which is a reason to resolve any account issue quickly.

What to do: leave the account open, funded and in good standing until the deposit appears. If the account was restricted during the window and the restriction has since lifted, raise that with Chase, with dates.

Look again 6. It arrived and you did not recognise it

Some readers are looking in the wrong place, or for the wrong word. Two published details explain almost all of these cases.

First, the destination. Chase says it will deposit the bonus in your new account within 15 days, meaning the new Chase account, not the outside bank you funded it from. If you have been watching your usual bank, the money may well have been sitting in the Chase account the whole time.

Second, the label. Chase treats the payment as interest:

A reader hunting for the word “bonus” may scroll straight past the line that is the bonus. Search the amount instead of the description, and expect a tax form at the end of the year. We are not tax advisers, and if the reporting matters to your situation you should ask someone who is.

Worth checking today 7. The monthly fee quietly ate part of it

Chase Total Checking carries a fee unless you meet one of four published conditions: Otherwise a $15 Monthly Service Fee will apply. New accounts get a grace period, since Chase states that New and converted accounts will not be charged a Monthly Service Fee for at least the first two statement periods, which is why the charge tends to surprise people in month three. If that is you, read is the Chase bonus worth the monthly fee, which works through the four waiver options and the maths in full.

How to write a ticket that gets resolved

The 15-day promise is the strongest thing you can hold Chase to: the requirements were completed on this date, Chase says the bonus arrives within 15 days of that, and today is later than that.

Send one message containing all of the following, in this order:

• Your offer enrollment date, or a request for it if Chase has never told you what it is. Everything else is measured from here.
• The date each qualifying deposit landed, and its amount. A short list, not a description.
• The payer for each deposit. Employer name, payroll provider, or the benefit agency. This is the part that proves the deposits meet Chase’s definition rather than merely being money.
• The date the running total crossed $1,000. Name it explicitly as the date you completed all requirements, and count the 15 days from it out loud.
• Confirmation the account has stayed open and unrestricted from that date to today, since Chase conditions payout on exactly that.

A message built like that gets read by someone who can act on it. If the answer that comes back is that you were ineligible, ask which published sentence the decision rests on.

Two dates that can change the answer entirely

Chase puts an end date on the offer itself:

That date governs enrollment, not your deposits: if you are already enrolled, your own 90-day window can run past the expiry. If you are deciding whether to start, the expiry is the deadline that matters.

The second sentence is easy to skim past:

Chase runs more than one checking bonus at a time, so the offer you enrolled in may not be the offer you have been reading about, with a different amount, deposit requirement or window. Find the terms you actually enrolled under, and check the current wording on Chase’s offer page before relying on any figure here.

Missing-bonus FAQ

How long is Chase allowed to take?

Fifteen days from the day you completed everything: After you have completed all the above requirements, we’ll deposit the bonus in your new account within 15 days. Count from the deposit that crossed $1,000.

Do Zelle transfers count?

No. Chase says Person to Person payments (such as Zelle ®) are not considered a direct deposit. Neither do micro-deposits, the tiny test amounts used to verify a linked account.

Does the $1,000 have to be one deposit?

No. It is direct deposits totaling $1,000 or more within 90 days of offer enrollment, so several qualifying paychecks add up to the same result.

When did my 90 days start?

At offer enrollment, which is not the same event as opening or funding the account. Ask Chase for the date.

Can I close the account once I qualify?

Not until the money lands. To receive this bonus, the enrolled account must not be closed or restricted at the time of payout. Wait for the deposit, then decide.

Why can I not see it in my transactions?

It goes into the new Chase account, and it is considered interest for reporting, so search for the amount rather than for the word bonus.

Other things that did not arrive

Every one of these is read from the company’s own document and dated. See all 59 questions we have answered.