Online Banking

In the old days, a bank was a well-guarded building where wealth was stored. But in the digital age, most of our money never ends up in physical form. With less necessity for maintaining branches, many banks are focusing on creating fantastic customer experiences where the majority of us do our banking — online.

Here are NerdWallet’s top high yield online savings accounts.

Best yield with ATM access: Synchrony High Yield Savings

Synchrony has a low $30 minimum to open an account, and maintaining a balance of $30 or more avoids a monthly fee. The bank also gives you a rebate of $5 per month toward third-party ATMs. The bank does offer a mobile app, but the only support options seem to be phone or Twitter.

If a high yield — currently 1.05%* — and ATM access are must-haves for your online savings account, Synchrony is a good option.

Best overall digital experience: Ally Bank

Though its 1.00%* interest rate is not the best you’ll find, Ally deserves recognition for its easy-to-use website design and platform-agnostic tools. Its customer service options are unusually broad, including a 24-hour call center and secure online chat for the phone-phobic among us.

The Ally online savings account can be hooked up to a checking account to serve as overdraft protection, and the bank got glowing reviews from the Pew Charitable Trust in its May 2015 roundup of consumer-friendly banks.

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Best yield for power savers: Barclays Dream Account

On top of its already impressive interest rate of 1.05%*, Barclays offers a rate bonus if you meet certain requirements. You can get a boost of 2.5% on the interest you’ve earned if you make deposits in your savings account for six months in a row and another 2.5% on the interest you’ve earned if you don’t make a withdrawal over that period.

The bonus rate is retroactive, covering the previous six months, but you can deposit only $1, 000 a month into your account. Even though you’re allowed to have up to three Dream accounts, the interest bonus doesn’t add up to a lot of money. Still, it may be appealing to people looking for motivation to save more.

The bank’s overdraft fee is only $5, but there’s no limit on the number of $5 fees you can incur at one time. If a deposit doesn’t clear and you make several withdrawal or transfer requests, you could face multiple overdraft fees.

Customer support is mostly limited to phone access, a downer for people who prefer online help. But if you’re an interest rate maximizer, you really can’t go wrong with the Barclays Dream Account.

Best feature to help you save: Capital One 360

Most people are saving money for multiple goals. You may be building up an emergency fund, saving for your summer vacation and socking away money to replace your elderly car. It can be hard to prevent yourself from mixing those pots of money together, spending too much of your emergency fund on a vacation or buying a junker car because you’re afraid to dip too far into your rainy-day fund.

Capital One 360’s genius solution is to allow online savings account holders to divide their money among multiple accounts — as many as 25. Easily renamed to reflect what you’re saving for, these accounts can be viewed all at once, and money can be transferred between them. There is no monthly fee, and overdraft fees are not an issue because transactions are simply denied if there are insufficient funds in the accounts. Account holders get an interest rate of 0.75%*.

If you like to organize your savings goals into separate categories, you and Capital One 360 are made for each other.

Making banking better

Savings accounts are almost a necessity for protecting some of your money from monthly cash flow needs. Although many brick-and-mortar banks excel at providing online tools, you might be happiest with a bank that focuses all its funds and customer service muscle toward technological solutions.

Interesting facts

• Online banking (or Internet banking or E-banking) allows customers of a financial institution to conduct financial transactions on a secure website operated by the institution, which can be a retail or virtual bank, credit union or building society.
  To access a financial institution's online banking facility, a customer having personal Internet...
• Mobile banking (also known as M-Banking, mbanking) is a term used for performing balance checks, account transactions, payments, credit applications and other banking transactions through a mobile device such as a mobile phone or Personal Digital Assistant (PDA). The earliest mobile banking services were offered over SMS, a service known as SMS...