Robinhood, a popular investing app, just announced a checking account with 3% interest, and it’s already in hot water. Robinhood is just the latest app to want your paycheck and all your cash without providing insurance if the company fails.

FDIC insurance is pretty simple. Bank balances up to $250,000 are insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which is backstopped by the US government. The FDIC was created in 1933 during the Great Depression to restore Americans’ faith in the banking system that had just failed. Since then, it has never failed to pay up. Whenever an FDIC-insured bank goes out of business, the FDIC steps in and makes sure you get every last cent of your money. No one has lost a penny of an FDIC insured bank account in 85 years.

But now some technology startups think they don’t need FDIC insurance on their banking products. After all, what are the odds a startup will go out of business?

Companies don’t normally fall flat on their face like Robinhood does. Robinhood announced that its new checking and savings product would be insured by the SIPC. That’s the Securities Investor Protection Corporation, a private organization that insures investments. The very next day, the head of the SIPC said he had serious concerns and didn’t think the money is protected by the SIPC. Robinhood would not comment publicly on his comments.

In other words, if Robinhood goes out of business, you could lose all the money in your Robinhood “bank account.” Do you really want to depend on a startup not going out of business?

Robinhood is just the latest example, but there are others. Square Cash wants you to deposit your paycheck into its app. But Square Cash doesn’t provide FDIC insurance for all the money you store there, as Walt Mossberg pointed out on Twitter. Until Square Cash gets that FDIC insurance it’s pursuing, you should avoid using it as a bank account. It’s a great app for sending money to people, but don’t keep all your money in it.

This doesn’t mean you can’t use online banks or app-based banking services. Most of them actually do provide FDIC insurance!

For example, online banks like Ally Bank, Alliant Credit Union, American Express, and Discover all offer savings accounts with 2% interest and FDIC insurance. Simple is a popular app-based bank and it offers 2.02% on savings with full FDIC insurance, too.

Whatever bank you’re looking at storing your money with, make sure it offers FDIC insurance.

We don’t normally cover financial and banking topics here, but we’re sick of seeing trendy startups announce banking products without the standard insurance that Americans have had for 85 years. We should all expect better from these companies, and we shouldn’t let them cut corners.

Image Credit: Christina Richards/Shutterstock.com.

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Profile Photo for Chris Hoffman Chris Hoffman
Chris Hoffman is Editor-in-Chief of How-To Geek. He's written about technology for over a decade and was a PCWorld columnist for two years. Chris has written for The New York Times and Reader's Digest, been interviewed as a technology expert on TV stations like Miami's NBC 6, and had his work covered by news outlets like the BBC. Since 2011, Chris has written over 2,000 articles that have been read more than one billion times---and that's just here at How-To Geek.
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