ING Direct Raises Orange Account Rate to 6% APY for Five Months

ING Direct raises the Orange Account to 6% APY and its own phone line is unaware

The news broke in the press before the bank itself. ING Direct raised its Orange Account to 6% APY via a notice picked up by elEconomista, while its own website still advertised 5%. A forum user attributed the decision to being "something fortuitous and very rapid," to the point that callers reached an operator who had no idea what they were talking about. After reading the news to the phone agent, the employee confirmed the offer started the next day and applied to balance increases. The fine print, of course, determines who gets paid and who doesn't.

What are the conditions for the 6% Orange Account?

For new customers, the door is open. For existing ones, the 6% only applies to funds exceeding the account's historical maximum, not the existing balance. Money parked in fixed-term deposits doesn't count toward this calculation, meaning those who entered previous promotions get nothing, leading some to suspect this is the design. Regarding the term, the offer lasts five months; after that, the Orange Account yields 3% annually and the Orange Fixed Deposit stays at 5.30% APY. The difference between these figures explains almost all the money movement that trinc.

The iBanesto bluff: the shortcut to claim 6% without being a new customer

This trick has a name in financial jargon: the bluff. It involves linking an iBanesto account by phone, initiating a transfer, and letting the system offer the 6% deposit before completing it. The destination account circulating is 0030 1001 37 0000002271. The detail matters: if the simulated transfer goes to iBanesto, the offer is for five months; if it goes to any other bank, it drops to three. Amounts also vary. A 5,000 euro operation activated nothing, requiring two deposits totaling 10,000 euros for the system to bite; another case set the threshold at 7,000, with the transfer limit between 18,000 and 19,000 euros. According to user reports, the plain Orange Account mechanism doesn't work, requiring a salary account.

Canceling the 5.5% deposit and redoing it at 6%: the renew plan

Here appeared the second, simpler, and more massive route. Deposits contracted at 5.5% have no early cancellation penalty, and the bank pays interest for the elapsed time, allowing cancellation and re-signing at 6% with a five-month reset. The calculation, with interest added to the principal, was broken down by several participants: those with staggered deposits won without moving a euro from the bank. Problems arose afterward. With 6% deposits already active, this money no longer counts as a balance increase, and some users discovered they couldn't redo the operation online or by phone. A circulating notice warns reading this before touching anything: the previous window was exceptional, not a rule.

The 6% funded by Dutch public money

It is important not to lose sight of where the money comes from. As one forum user pointed out, besides falling in the stock market, the Dutch government had injected 10 billion euros into ING via share purchases. Another participant noted that on the same day the entity lost another 10% in the stock exchange, Santander traded in the same zone, around 7 euros. With this landscape, the question of whether 6% is sustainable is not idle, and some calculate how much a bank saves when clients cancel old deposits to re-contract them. Against that, the most repeated answer is the old recipe: diversify among several entities and don't put all savings in one basket.

What will the ECB do and what happens if the Euribor turns around?

The macroeconomic context pushes in both directions. With inflation soaring in Spain and across Europe, and banks offering increasingly higher interest rates, a +0.25 points increase at the next European Central Bank meeting seemed more than possible to some participants. This movement would support short-term savings remuneration. Working against this is the forecast that the Euribor, the yuri of the after-dinner conversation, will eventually yield: if this happens, medium-term deposits contracted today would be above market rates, and those who bet on short terms would be right. It is the classic tug-of-war between securing a fixed rate or waiting for better offers.

After December 31, 2008, there is no plan. No one knows what interest will remain in the Orange Account or if the bluff will still open the door, as there are already cases where the system offers absolutely nothing. There, and not in the brochures, the calculation stalls.