The Capital One Spark Business Checking account is one of the best free business checking account options available currently. Previously, there was only one version of this Business Checking account and it was available online only. That has since changed and now Capital One offers two varieties of this account, both of which can be serviced at their physical branch locations in CT,DC,DE,LA,MD,NJ,NY,TX and VA. I’ll review all the benefits you’ll enjoy, but also go over why it may not suit your particular needs.
All About The Spark Business Checking Accounts
Businesses looking for a solid checking account option typically have to deal with three issues:
- Monthly service fees: This is the monthly charge that occurs as long as your account is open. It could be as little as $8, or it could be upwards of $35 monthly for premier accounts. You’ll usually have the option of waiving this fee with monthly requirements such as an average daily balance minimum.
- Excess transaction fees: These fees are charged when you go over your monthly limit on banking services like writing checks, debit card transactions and ATM deposits.
- Cash handling fees: When this fee is applicable, you’ll be charged for going over your monthly cash deposit limit.
Compare The Two Spark Business Checking Options
The two Capital One Business Checking account options include the Spark Business Basic Checking and the Spark Business Unlimited Checking.
Here are the updated details on Capital One’s Spark Business Checking accounts. Previously it was an online-only Business Checking account free of all the typical fees discussed above. With the updated Spark Business Checking accounts that are available at physical branch locations, fees will apply in certain situations. Carefully review which account may be best for your needs.
| Basic | Unlimited | |
| Product Description | With Spark Business Basic Checking, you get unlimited transactions each month, plus online and mobile banking | With Spark Business Unlimited Checking you get 5 free domestic wire transfers per month and have access to 2 Basic Checking accounts at no additional cost. And of course, you can make as many transactions as you want with no unexpected fees. |
| Transactions | Unlimited business transactions | Unlimited business transactions |
| Cash Deposits | Deposit up to $5,000 in cash each month with no fee; $1 for every $1,000 deposited after that | No fee for cash deposits |
| Wires | Standard wire fees apply | First 5 domestic wires free each month |
| Monthly Service Fee | $15 monthly service fee | $35 monthly service fee |
| Ways to Waive | $15 monthly fee waived: with $2,000 minimum 30- or 90-day average balance
-or- Two additional, eligible business products | $35 monthly fee waived: with $25,000 minimum 30- or 90-day average balance
-or- Two additional, eligible business products |
| Services Included | Online and Mobile Banking, Mobile Deposits and Online Bill Pay | Online and Mobile Banking, Mobile Deposits and Online Bill Pay |
Spark Business Checking $250 & $1,000 Bonuses!
Here are two offers from Capital One for their Business Checking accounts – a $250 bonus that requires a $25,000 deposit and a $1,000 bonus that requires a $100,000 deposit.
- Bonus offers set to expire 06/29/2018
- Offer available in CT,DC,DE,LA,MD,NJ,NY,TX,VA
- Spark Business Basic Checking and Spark Business Unlimited Checking are eligible for the bonuses (either account can qualify for either bonus)
- Direct deposit is not required for this offer
- Application will trigger a Soft Pull, which does not affect your credit
How To Get The Bonuses
- Customers that are new to Capital One Spark Business Checking who maintain an average daily balance of at least $25,000 for each month during the six months after the month the account is opened will receive one payment of $250.
- Customers that are new to Capital One Spark Business Checking who maintain an average daily balance of at least $100,000 for each month during the six months after the month the account is opened will receive one payment of $1,000.
- Payment will be credited to newly opened Spark Basic or Unlimited Checking accounts by February 28, 2019.
READ MORE: SEE THE BEST BANK BONUSES HERE AND THE BEST INVESTING BONUSES HERE.
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I need to order the SPARK Business card Summary for the Year-End 2017
I agree with all the other negative reviews. In addition to all the other downsides of the SPARK product, they also just cancelled the ability to pay bills from the account, a service literally every other banking offers. Such a horrible product- I am so disappointed and will be looking for a different provider
DO NOT open a Spark Business account if you already have a Capital One 360 account! I have a Capital One 360 account and I have been with them since 2009 when they were ING. My business partner and I researched accounts and thought that Spark was a great way to go, but I have not been able to be brought on as a Authorized Signer because of a screw up by the way they migrated the Spark Business website to Capital One.
They have no information on when the issue will be resolved and it’s been going on since last year some time. They are all apologies, but have no way of making it right.
I have been getting this message since early this year:
Access Denied
You don’t have permission to access “https://secure.capitalone360.com/myaccount/banking/login.vm?” on this server.
Reference #18.c69774d1.1529602484.9dcff58
Forget Sparks Business checking account. 3 months of multiple tries to set up the account without success. Now there’s a ‘glitch’ that they’re working on but no end in site so still unable to open an account. Going elsewhere. Can’t trust them with my money if this is how they are set up
CapitalOne’s Spark Business online application is broken, and according to CapitalOne there is no timeline for fixing it. Until they fix it there is no way to successfully complete an application for an account.
I am not sure why I was misled as I believe others are about Chase Spark being great for small business owners. I opened my account about two months ago – which was a giant struggle in itself – and I have had nothing but problems since.
Now I am working to close this account, and I can’t seem to find anyone who is willing to help me do this. It’s like they are holding my money hostage and refuse to let it go.
I do not make much money, so this is a big deal. If you have a small business – be warned and STAY AWAY from a Chase Spark account.
Suck it Capital One,
Applied on the fourth of July, waited 5 business days, called and they said to wait until 7, called after 7 business days and they said they would expedite in under 2 business days, on the third business day the rep put me right through to a manager who told me there is a back end application process problem which caused their underwriters to never see my application and therefore they could not process it. I asked if they were going to call and tell me that and he had no good answer, instead he said to reapply which he admitted might face the same issue of application failure to only repeat this dreadful process. Now I am forced to do what I didn’t want to do…go to a bank and pay fees. On a positive note I got a hold of customer service 🙂
I wouldn’t recommend Capital One checking to anyone. Keep your company’s funds far away from these people. My business partner and I are Amazon vendors. We set up a Spark checking account late last year and began selling online. Amazon wire transferred our funds into our account every two weeks. We focused on buying inventory this first year so every purchase we made was on our company’s AMEX cards. Literally all we did was accept deposits from Amazon and pay our credit card bills online. We’ve never drained the account nor have we ever been overdrawn. One morning I logged onto the Capital One Spark app to check our balance only to discover that I couldn’t log on. A generic error message came up and gave me Ref # 70008.8981. I emailed customer service and provided the number and asked to be informed when our account access was restored. Two hours go by and no reply. I called Capital One and the first rep had no clue why I was locked out. She then put me on hold and came back several minutes later with one vague sentence as an explanation for what happened: “Capital One has decided to end the banking relationship” and a check for the amount of our balance was “being mailed”. I demanded to know why and she claimed she didnt know. I demanded to be put in touch with someone who did know. She then transferred me to someone named Ricardo. He said he would “reach out” to the department responsible for the decision. He put me on hold and several minutes later came back with the exact same non-explanation as the first rep gave me. I demanded to know a reason why Capital One would close our account with literally no advance notice on the exact day a wire transfer from Amazon was due to process and we had credit card payments scheduled with American Express. He steadfastly refused to give me any reason whatsoever even after he acknowledged to me that he could see that our account had never been overdrawn. I demanded that he provide me with a tracking number for the delivery of the check they wrote upon closing our account. He then informed me that it was sent via regular mail (meaning no chain of custody for our money). He then refused to verify the address it was sent to. I filed a complaint with the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (Complaint Number 170606-2146919).
Capital One, with no sense of obligation to give us advance notice, has thrown our finances into disarray and maintain their stance that no explanation is owed to us. Both my partner and I have vehicles financed with Capital One and I have several Capital One credit cards, so identity verification was definitely not the issue.
My advice is that if Capital One acts this irresponsibly and feel they can leave small business owners in a lurch with impunity, I would keep my money far away from them.
I too am having a terrible time getting ahold of customer service. I began the process to open my account on April 4th and it wasn’t opened until April 24th. I have been trying to reach customer service ever since with several questions and corrections. They never answer the phone and they still haven’t responded to my support request submitted via the website on the 24th.
One thing that is already driving me crazy is that they send email alerts for the business to my personal email address and personal 360 banking alerts to my business email address. There is no way to correct this. It’s maddening.
I received the debit card already, albeit with the LLC left off the business name. Does anyone know if they mail the pin?
Also, does anyone know what the checkbook looks like that you can order? Are they business size checks or personal sized? Are they wallet type, or 3 per page in a binder, or printer type, or what? I wish they would respond so I can fix the unprofessional formatting of my business address as they don’t let you change it yourself before ordering the checkbook.
Thank you for any light you can shed.
They are a second rate company returning to their third rate roots
I am in the same both with Chelsea. I applied on 3/26/17. Called Tuesday, 4/4/17, and the customer service guy said that they are receiving so many applications that the actual time has now extended to 8-10 days and this is now the 10th day and they said to wait until next Monday, 4/8/17, to get an e-mail. -_-
So, a lot has put on hold on my business as I need a bank account. Oh well… I guess I would have to find another online business banking.
I applied to Spark Business Banking on March 7th after submitting some simple paperwork I was prompted to wait 5-7 business days for a response. I thought this was a little odd since on Capital One’s Spark website (under FAQ) states opening an account takes 10 minutes. However, I understand that Spark would need to verify the authenticity of my business. I waited anxiously and didn’t hear anything so on the 5th business day I decided to call customer service, little did I know this would be the first of many calls to Spark’s customer service team. To make a long story short customer service stated Capital One is unable to accommodate the amount of applications they received within the last few weeks. My application would take anywhere from 8-10 business days. On the 10th business day I called and asked them to expedite my application, they wouldn’t expedite until the 11th business day. I called on the 11th business day and they stated that they would request that my application is expedited however from the time of expedition it would take 24 hours. I received an email on the 11th business day asking for documentation stating proof of address. Okay-movement, I sent the proof of address document in asap only to be met with another please wait 5-7 business days. I called customer service again, I heard the same spiel about not having enough staff to accommodate the amount of applications and realistically it will take 8-10 business days. If you need to obtain a bank account fast I wouldn’t recommend Spark. I cannot proceed with the next step of establishing my business until my account is setup. Spark has delayed my projected start date.
It should also be noted, I left two online messages via the forum on Sparks website. No one e-mailed me back or acknowledged receiving my messages (not even the standard generated e-mail confirming the message was processed).
The average wait time to speak with a customer service rep is 6-12 minutes. I must note that the majority of Spark’s customer service representatives are nice and take time to recite the scripted response they are trained to recall given a particular situation. Whenever I asked to speak to someone aside from customer service they replied that there was no one else to speak to.
Gosh that sounds very frustrating Chelsea. Thanks for sharing your experience for others, and hopefully Capital One will get things sorted out for future clients.
It didn’t. It’s been almost a year since that post and still customers are facing the same issues. My suggestion is: If they are NOT ready to take care of customers needs pleaseeee let us know so we don’t spend our precious time trying to navigate the process of opening a bus acct at CO. The last rep I talked to told me straight up I should do what’s best for my bus and open an acct somewhere else.
I’ve had a similar experience and I’m thinking of canceling my application and trying Wells Fargo since I already do my personal banking with them. I submitted my original application on the 15th. I didn’t receive a confirmation email until a week later and they asked me for several forms that I had already submitted in my application. So I emailed them and got a “wait 5-7 business days” autoresponse. I’m worried because I don’t want every customer inquiry to take 5-7 business days…what if that hurts my business in the future? I guess Spark was just too good to be true and you get what you paid for.
The Spark Business android app does not accept the pictures of the check when trying to make a deposit. Support was of no help. No problem making a deposit with same phone to another bank. So the Spark account is of no use to me.