For some time, Bank of America has been offering its credit card customers a cash bonus for opening a new checking account. Today, with $75 dangled in front of me, I decided to take advantage of the offer and went ahead and opened up a free MyAccess Checking account online. Below is a screenshot of the main credit card page with the offer strategically placed in the upper-left quadrant.   

While the online account opening process was relatively smooth, there are a number of things the bank could do better, starting with pre-filling the application with my personal info. Even though I have two Bank of America credit cards and I responded to the offer from within the secure online banking environment, I still had to start the application from scratch.

And taking a queue from online retailers such as Dell, the bank drops a number of cross sells into the application process.  I'll have a full analysis of the account opening process in our upcoming Online Banking Report on online account opening to be published in first quarter.