Regarding the credit unions, if I were using any one, I probably will go with FDIC insured CU at least they sounds safer than those only provide private insurance, though it doesn’t mean they are not safe. The rewards (interest rates) need to a lot higher to get people take the risk with them.

“For legal and accounting purposes, your EO is broken-down into two subaccounts (one savings account and one checking account, both of which earn interest at the same rate). ”

So, you WILL continue to earn the same interest rate throughout the month.

If they really did not pay interest the entire month though, I bet banks would have a lot of highly annoyed, otherwise highly profitable customers, as interest checking accounts are typically aimed towards the more wealthy with minimum daily balance limits, etc.

(A similar but off topic issue is that a lot of people feel that privately insured Credit Unions are less secure than NCUA (their FDIC equivalent) insured credit unions and won’t even touch them, even though the private insurers have to maintain a higher level of reserves on hand than the NCUA, can provide higher levels of coverage than NCUA, and are completely legal for state-chartered credit unions to use.

I’ve seen a few state-chartered credit unions who were paying extra to get deposits insured beyond NCUA’s level drop this coverage, not because they couldn’t afford the supplemental/alternative insurance (if done in addition or alongside NCUA is up to them), but because they were actually *losing* deposits because people were scared that they were “not federally insured”, and simply not using them.)