Today I am going to be doing a brief writeup on Oxygen Bank. They are a fintech bank with interesting offerings for cash back and benefits. These benefits come in the form of what they Elements which have many rules and requirements you have to meet to qualify for them that make this a hard bank to recommend trying to make use of.

However, with the end of Point came a referral program Point has with Oxygen where you can get $110 bonus for hitting a few requirements and get the Element fee refunded

You can also use my referral link here

Elements

As explained, Elements are different qualifying tiers Oxygen offers with different and increasing benefits for each. You can see the details here. They also have some useful cash back offers that vary in amount (except for the Fast Food & Coffee one) but the categories remain the same

Benefits

From a high level, the benefits for me are mainly the cash back. The $1 on food is the useful for small purchases like coffee. Most except for the gas offer are redeemable once every 24 hours, with gas being once every 7 days. They are all maxed at $5 for all elements so be sure you are not going above that to get the most cash back out of the purchase

Requirements

Now this is where things get a bit convoluted. Each Element not only comes with its own benefits, but they also come with their own requirements. Earth is the base Element and has no requirements or fees. Each subsequent Element has higher requirements and fees than the last

Upgrade Qualification

In order for you to be able to upgrade an Element, you must first met the requirements. The requirements are listed above but are a combination of a specified amount in direct deposit and another specified amount in debit spend, all done within 30 days.

For the debit spend, they seem to count CashApp reloads, although this got my account flagged for fraud. I had to send them verification documentation for my identity (they even asked for my social security card which I refused) and my reason behind these transactions (I said I bought stock in the app) and they unlocked my account after a day or two

As for the DD requirement, they do have some checks in place. My employer DD worked as expected but they did not count my Etrade deposit. I did do some Astra pushes with the words “Payroll Salary” in the transfer name and those counted but YMMV here

You can easily track your progress towards certain Elements by viewing the Elements page in app or on the web portal. They show you a green check mark next to each requirement signifying if it is satisfied and usually update in a day or less

Annual Fee

Once you meet the above requirements, you then have to choose to upgrade to a specific Element. When you do, they will immediately assess your annual fee which vary by element. AFAIK these are not cumulative; if you upgrade to say Water for $19.99 then qualify and decide to upgrade to Air for $49.99, I do not believe you get your initial $19.99 back for upgrading to Water. In addition, for the Point referral, I do not believe you get more than one AF refund

Continual Requirements

Year End & AF

Now once you qualify and pay for an Element, there are monthly requirements to

1. Get the AF waived at the end of the year
2. Qualify for the Element for the next year
3. Earn the higher interest in the savings account

If the above are met for the specific Element you are in, you will be eligible for another year of and get the AF waived for your Element

Element APY

In order for you to qualify for the elevated APY your tier offers, you not only need to qualify for the Element and pay the AF, but you must also meet the following monthly requirements

Downgrading/End of Year

Per their terms:

If you do not renew your enrollment in your current tier, we will automatically assign you to the next highest
tier for which you qualify based on the annual minimum qualifying Card transaction requirements shown in
the table above. You will not need to pay an Annual Fee if you are automatically assigned to another tier

https://oxygen.us/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Deposit-Account-Agreement-202208.pdf

So if you do not qualify for any Element based on your continual requirements, you will automatically be downgraded to Earth and not pay a fee

Reflection

This is enough to make your head spin. Honestly if there wasn’t the Point referral I used I would not have opened an account. But I am so glad I did because I now have this exclusive Fire card. It is really striking in person and had some very nice packaging, the best I have personally seen for any of my cards. Although it is like pulling teeth to get them, the Elements do have an elegance to them. I will leave you with a photo dump of the unboxing experience for the Fire card. Enjoy

Unboxing/Card Images

To see high quality images of the card, see my dedicated Card Designs post