All offers / Bank accounts / Huntington
Huntington pays $400 for $500 of direct deposit. Only one kind of deposit counts, and only in 13 states.
Huntington advertises this as "up to a $600 bonus", but the $600 is a different account that wants twenty five thousand dollars of outside money sitting still. The figure nearly everyone collects is the $400, and its deposit bar is genuinely low, $500 in total across a full 90 days.
What Huntington counts as a direct deposit
This is where most bank bonuses die. Huntington's terms name a specific plumbing system, not a type of income, so two identical paychecks can get different answers depending on the network they travelled over.
Counts, in Huntington's own words. "Qualifying direct deposits are regular, periodic automated clearing house (ACH) credits, which may include payroll, salary, pension or government payments (such as Social Security)." Note "regular" and "periodic": the terms describe a stream of deposits, not one lump sum arranged once.
Does not count, also in their words. "Deposits that DO NOT QUALIFY are those through the Real-Time Payments (RTP) network, and payments through peer-to-peer networks such as PayPal, Zelle, Venmo or others. These do not qualify as direct deposits. Transfers from another Huntington deposit account also do not qualify."
The RTP exclusion is nearly invisible. In your app an RTP credit and an ACH credit look identical: same employer, same amount, money in the account. Huntington's page does not say which employers use which, and we will not guess. If your pay arrives instantly, or you use any get-paid-early feature, ask your payroll department in these words: is this sent by ACH.
The obvious shortcut is closed. Pushing $500 in from your old bank is a transfer, not a direct deposit, and Zelle from a relative is excluded by name. If no real payer will route payroll or a benefit payment here, read the bonuses that need no direct deposit instead.
What pays what
| New Perks Checking, plus $500 of qualifying direct deposits within 90 days | $400 |
|---|---|
| New Platinum Perks Checking, plus $25,000 of new money within 90 days | $600 |
| Asterisk-Free Checking, the account with no monthly fee | $0 bonus |
| Credits over the Real-Time Payments network | Does not count |
| PayPal, Zelle, Venmo or any peer-to-peer payment | Does not count |
| A transfer from another Huntington deposit account | Does not count |
| Applying from any page other than Huntington's offer page | $0 |
| Living outside the 13 listed states | $0 |
| Existing Huntington checking customers, fiduciary relationships included | $0 |
| Anyone who closed a Huntington checking account in the last 12 months | $0 |
| A second Huntington incentive inside a rolling 24 months | $0 |
Do this, in this order
- Check the state list before anything else. The offer is limited to applicants residing in Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, West Virginia or Wisconsin. If your state is not on it, stop here.
- Check that you count as new. The offer is open to new personal checking customers only. Excluded: all existing Huntington checking customers, anyone with "any relationship (including fiduciary) to any other Huntington personal checking account", and anyone who closed a checking account within the last 12 months. Being a joint owner, a trustee, or a signer on a parent's account can be enough.
- Pick the tier you can genuinely hit. Perks Checking pays $400 for $500 of qualifying direct deposits. Platinum Perks Checking pays $600 for $25,000 of new money, which Huntington defines as "money that is not currently on deposit in any Huntington account (except maturing personal CDs)".
- Apply from Huntington's offer page, and only from there. The page states it plainly: "Bonus code will only be applied when you click the Apply buttons on this page. Apply buttons on other pages will not generate a bonus code." There is no code to copy, and no way to attach one later.
- Put two dates in your calendar. You must apply by September 30, 2026, and your 90 day clock then runs from account opening, not from your first deposit. Payroll departments routinely take a full cycle to switch, so start in week one.
- Change your payroll at the source, then check what landed. When the first deposit arrives, read how the transaction is described. If it says instant or real time, or looks like a person to person payment, treat the $400 as at risk and fix it while most of the 90 days remain.
- Deal with the monthly fee. Perks Checking has "no monthly fee with $1,000 in total monthly deposits, or $5,000 in total relationship balances, otherwise $10 a month". Notice the mismatch: the bonus asks for $500 of qualifying direct deposits across the whole 90 days, while the fee waiver asks for $1,000 of deposits every single month. Route exactly enough to earn the bonus and no more, and you can be paying $10 a month while you wait. The two tests also use different words: the bonus counts qualifying direct deposits, the waiver counts total monthly deposits. Huntington does not define the second phrase, so ask a banker rather than assuming your own transfers cover it.
- Keep the account open, and let the payment come to you. Both tiers require you to "maintain an open account status in the eligible checking account for 90 days". The bonus is then "deposited into your new checking account within 14 days of meeting the promotion requirements". Closing it the week you qualify loses money you have already earned.
The fine print that can still cost you the bonus
You can live in the right state, apply from the right page, route real payroll, and still be paid nothing.
One incentive per rolling 24 months, across everything you hold there. "Huntington reserves the right to limit an individual to one account-related gift incentive per rolling 24-month period across all deposit account relationships." That is a per person limit, not a per product one: their own worked example says a cash incentive on a business account can block another on any new account for 24 months.
They reserve the right to close the account before you qualify, and pay nothing. Verbatim: "Huntington reserves the right to close an account at our discretion, prior to promotional requirements being met, and without a promotional payment if promotions abuse is suspected." The named trigger is opening multiple accounts solely to receive cash incentives and closing them shortly after.
It cannot be stacked with another checking offer. "This offer cannot be used in combination with any other consumer checking offer."
It is taxable, and taxed as interest. "For tax purposes, you will receive a Form 1099-INT from us for the cash bonus."
The account itself pays almost no interest. Huntington states the annual percentage yield as 0.02% on Perks Checking and 0.03% on Platinum Perks Checking. On the $500 the $400 tier asks for, that is a rounding error.
The $600 tier, priced honestly
Platinum Perks wants $25,000 of new money within 90 days, held in an account paying 0.03%. Over a year that balance earns about $7.50. Over the three months it must sit there, about $2.
On July 24, 2026 we examined Marcus and recorded a 3.40% base savings rate. Twenty five thousand dollars at that rate earns roughly $850 a year, or about $210 across 90 days, so the true gain on the $600 tier is closer to $390 than to $600 for anyone who would otherwise hold the cash in a normal savings account. Still a fair three months' work for a form, and roughly what the $400 tier pays for a hundredth of the money.
- Huntington's headline for the Platinum Perks tier$600
- What it is really worth if the money would otherwise sit in a savings accountAbout $390
The gap is the roughly $210 of interest that $25,000 would have earned at 3.40% across the same 90 days.
Platinum Perks also waives its $25 monthly fee only while you keep $25,000 in total relationship balances, so moving the money back out after the bonus lands starts a $300 a year charge, and closing the account instead is precisely what the abuse language describes.
Is there a Huntington referral link or promo code?
No. We looked for a reader-facing refer a friend programme on huntington.com and found none, and for a first-party affiliate programme and found none. We will not assert one exists on the strength of a network directory listing, because a directory is not the bank. So there is no code, no invite, and nobody paid when you open the account. The whole mechanism is the Apply button on one page.
huntington.com refuses automated readers, so these terms were read in an ordinary browser on July 25, 2026.
Is it worth your time?
If you live in one of the 13 states and your employer sends pay by ACH, yes, comfortably. $400 for $500 of deposits across 90 days is the friendliest ratio we have found in banking this year. The work is about half an hour: check the exclusions, open the offer page, click Apply on that page, file one payroll form, set a reminder for September 30. The hardest part is not the money, it is remembering which page you clicked from. If you are outside the footprint, your pay arrives instantly, or you are already a Huntington customer in any capacity including on somebody else's account, this offer is closed, and better to hear that now than in 90 days.