Chip Review: Boosted Savings Rates and a £50 Bonus. What's the Catch?

Chip is a savings and investing app, not a bank. It has no branches, issues no debit card and gives no cash machine access: everything happens in the app. Two Chip companies run it. Chip Financial Group Ltd (Companies House 10113174, called Chip Financial Ltd until May 2026) is a payment institution authorised by the FCA (FRN 911255). Chip Financial Wealth Ltd (15161994, formerly Chip Financial (Investments) Ltd) is an FCA-authorised investment firm (FRN 1005114) that provides the Smart Cash ISA, the Stocks & Shares ISA, the general investment account (GIA) and the pension. Both show as authorised on the FCA register, checked on 12 October 2026.

Protection depends on the account. Instant Access, Easy Access, Prize Savings and the older Chip Cash ISA are held at ClearBank (FRN 754568), in your name, each with its own sort code and account number. The FSCS covers up to £120,000 across all of them together, and that limit is shared with any other account you hold that ClearBank provides. If Chip itself failed, ClearBank would still hold the money.

The Smart Cash ISA works differently. Chip holds your money as client money, separate from its own, and places it with a panel of banks: HSBC, Lloyds, Barclays, Santander UK, Nationwide, Qatar National Bank and National Bank of Kuwait (International). FSCS cover is £120,000 per bank, shared with anything you already hold at that bank, and interest is only covered once it has been credited. Money on its way in ("pending", usually one to two working days) sits in Chip's safeguarded client money account at ClearBank. Parts of Chip's protection page still quote the old £85,000 deposit limit; the rest of that page and Chip's terms say £120,000.

Investments in the Stocks & Shares ISA and GIA are held by Seccl Custody (FRN 793200, according to Chip). If Seccl or a fund manager failed, the FSCS can pay up to £85,000, but it never covers investments falling in value. Bonuses and Prize Savings prizes aren't covered at all.

Four savings accounts are open to new customers. All have variable rates that track the Bank of England's Bank Rate (3.75% on 12 October 2026), interest is paid monthly, and three come with a new-customer boost for 12 months from the day you open the account:

Smart Cash ISA: 4.76% AER for 12 months (3.50% plus a 1.26% boost), then 3.50%. Tax-free and flexible, so you can take money out and put it back in the same tax year without using more of your £20,000 allowance. Withdrawals are unlimited and free and arrive the next working day. Chip's example: £1,000 grows to £1,047.60 over the boosted year.

Instant Access: 3.51% AER for 12 months (3.00% plus 0.51%), then 3.00%. Unlimited withdrawals, which Chip says can take up to 2 hours to reach your bank, and deposits of up to £1 million. Chip's example: £1,000 grows to £1,035.10 over 12 months.

Easy Access: 3.81% AER for 12 months (3.50% plus 0.31%), then 3.50%. Three withdrawals in each 12 months from the day you open it are free; make a fourth and the rate drops by 2.10% for the rest of that 12 months, to 1.71% while the boost lasts or 1.40% after it. It doesn't count towards the referral bonus.

Prize Savings pays no interest and enters you into a monthly draw instead (next section). The older Chip Cash ISA is closed to new customers.

The boost catch: each boost is for someone who has "never previously transacted in a Chip account and has no other promotional rates applied on any Chip products". Read literally, that means one boost per customer, on the first account you pay into, so decide which account matters before you deposit anything. Chip doesn't spell this out; ask its support if you plan to use two accounts.

Instead of interest, every £10 of your average balance over a calendar month gives you one entry into that month's draw. You can hold from £10 to £85,000 and need an average of at least £10 to be entered. The September and October prize funds were £100,000 each: one £10,000 prize, seven of £500, 73 of £100, 180 of £20, 360 of £10 and 14,400 of £5.

Two catches. Prizes are not cash: they're added to your account as a bonus and only become cash once you withdraw your entire Prize Savings balance to your bank, and they aren't covered by the FSCS or counted for entries. And because Chip doesn't publish how many entries there are, there's no way to work out what £1,000 can expect to win, as you can with an interest rate.

Chip says its draw has "3.5x better odds than Premium Bonds". That's Chip's own, unverified comparison, based on the chance of winning any prize per £10 in September 2025; 14,400 of its 15,021 monthly prizes are £5. If you want a known return, the interest accounts give you one.

The two plans differ on autosaves and investing. Basic is free. ChipX has a 28-day free trial, then costs £5.99 every 28 days, which is 13 payments or £77.87 a year, or £65.05 if you pay for the year up front. Chip's pricing FAQ also describes the annual plan as £4.99 every 28 days, which comes to £64.87, not £65.05; the plan table shows £65.05.

On Basic each autosave costs 45p, while recurring deposits are free on both plans. Three autosaves a week would cost £70.20 a year, so on Basic a fixed recurring deposit is the cheaper habit.

Investing on Basic carries a platform fee of 0.25% a year on the Stocks & Shares ISA and GIA, taken monthly, with a minimum of £1 a month per account. That minimum means at least £12 a year per account until you pass £4,800 invested, or 1.2% a year on £1,000, before fund charges. If there's no cash in the account, Chip sells some of your investments to pay it. ChipX has no platform fee, but it only costs less than the 0.25% from about £26,020 invested in one account with annual billing, or £31,150 with monthly billing, unless you use a lot of autosaves.

Fund access is unclear. Chip's plan table shows "access to all our investment funds" on both plans, while its FAQ says Basic is limited to thirteen funds. Moving back down is harder: the FAQ says you need a £0 balance in your Stocks & Shares ISA, and any ChipX-only funds in a GIA sold, before you can downgrade. Check which funds your plan includes in the app before you buy.

You can cancel ChipX within 14 days of upgrading, through the in-app chat, without paying. If you downgrade later, you keep ChipX until the end of the current 28 days, and if you close your Chip account while a subscription is running, you don't get the unused part back.

Chip links to one personal current account in your name, through Open Banking. Money can only come in from that account and only goes back to it. Autosaves use the link to work out what you can spare from your spending and move it across; Chip tells you about six hours before each one, and you can cancel it in the app. If you switch on the overdraft save feature, any overdraft charges that follow are yours.

Paying in through the app can take up to three business days to reach a savings account and up to eight working days to reach an investment account, and money only starts earning once it has arrived. Taking money out takes up to two working days for savings and up to five for investments, according to Chip's terms; Chip's own pages say up to 2 hours for Instant Access and the next working day for the Smart Cash ISA. Investments have to be sold first, at a price you don't know when you place the order.

Chip offers a flexible Stocks & Shares ISA (from £1, with Seccl Custody as the ISA manager), a general investment account and a personal pension invested in BlackRock LifePath funds, which currently has no drawdown option. You pick from a fund list rather than individual shares: Chip's funds page listed 43 funds and ETFs on 12 October 2026, from index trackers and ready-made mixed funds to thematic funds, with fund charges from 0.05% to 1.00% a year on top of any platform fee. Chip is execution-only, so it doesn't advise you, and your capital is at risk.

Two rules to know before you invest. You can't close an investment account on its own, only your whole Chip account, and if you do, Chip says you won't be able to open an investment account again, even if you rejoin later. And once you close the Stocks & Shares ISA or transfer it out, you can't open another one with Chip. Chip doesn't charge to transfer the ISA out.

Take the minimum: £1,000 for exactly 90 days with the new-customer boost. In the Smart Cash ISA it earns about £11.53 of interest, in Instant Access £8.54, and in Prize Savings no interest but 100 entries a month. Add the £50 and you have £61.53 or £58.54. Easy Access would earn £9.26 and doesn't qualify for the bonus.

So over the 90 days the bonus is most of the value: £50 is 5% of £1,000, about 20% a year as a simple rate, but only once. It's a flat amount, so paying in more doesn't increase it.

Instant Access is the simplest home for the qualifying money: no withdrawal limits, no ISA rules, and the bonus lands there anyway. The ISA earns more, but uses £1,000 of your allowance, and transferring or closing it costs any interest not yet paid.

We wouldn't use an investment account for it. Prices move, and on Basic the platform fee (at least £1 a month) comes out of the account, so £1,000 invested could slip under £1,000 and restart the 90-day count. The terms don't say how Chip treats a fall in value, so if you do invest, keep a margin above £1,000.

Chip's current referral promotion pays £50 to you and £50 to the person who referred you. It runs from 1 October to 23:59 on 31 October 2026, and you get the promotion that's live when the code is applied to your account, so join through our link or with code CHIP-XWW289 by then. Chip can change or end the promotion at any time.

You must be a new customer who has never held a Chip account, on app version 4.56.0 or later, and meet Chip's account rules: 18 or over, UK resident, tax resident only in the UK, and not a US person.

There are two ways in. Through our link, enter your email on Chip's referral page, download the app within 30 calendar days and sign up with the same email; Chip applies the code for you. If one email is entered for several referrals, only the most recent counts. Or download the app, sign up and enter CHIP-XWW289 yourself within 14 calendar days of downloading.

Then pay at least £1,000 into eligible accounts, split however you like: the Smart Cash ISA, Instant Access, Prize Savings, the Stocks & Shares ISA and the GIA. Easy Access and the Chip Pension don't count. Keep at least £1,000 there for 90 consecutive calendar days; if the balance dips below £1,000, the count starts again from zero. Everything, the 90 days included, has to be done within 120 calendar days of being referred, so the hold has to start by day 30. Deposits can take up to three business days to arrive (eight working days for investments), so pay in early.

The £50 goes into your Instant Access account, or into Prize Savings if you don't have Instant Access, so you need one of them open. It earns no interest and no prize entries. Chip's general terms add that bonuses aren't FSCS protected, that Chip can withhold one even if you meet the advertised criteria, and that a bonus is only paid to you when you withdraw your full Chip balance; the referral terms say it can then take up to five working days to reach your bank. Chip can also disqualify anyone it suspects of gaming the promotion.

Disclosure: CHIP-XWW289 is GetQuids' own code, so when you qualify, Chip pays us £50 too.

On 12 October 2026 the Chip app was rated 4.7 from 39,465 ratings on the App Store and 4.4 from about 6,800 ratings on Google Play, where it has more than 500,000 downloads. Chip scored 4.4 on Trustpilot from 5,135 reviews, 78% of them five-star and 13% one-star, and it replies to 99% of negative reviews there. Written App Store reviews are harsher: of the 150 most recent in Apple's UK feed, going back to October 2024, 74 were one-star.

The low-rated reviews repeat the same themes: Cash ISA transfers out that are slow or rejected, and difficulty withdrawing or leaving; support through a chatbot and in-app chat that goes round in circles; bank linking through Open Banking failing, with sign-up, login and forced-update loops; rate cuts and changed conditions; dislike of the September 2026 rebrand and promotional notifications; slower withdrawals from the new ISA and from investments; and boosts or promo codes not being applied.

Support is by in-app chat or email (hello@getchip.uk). Chip aims to respond to a complaint within three business days and give a final answer within 15 (35 in exceptional cases); after that you can go to the Financial Ombudsman Service.

You need to be 18 or over, live in the UK, be tax resident only in the UK and not be a US person, and you can have one Chip account. Download the app, enter your details, pass the identity check and link your bank. Chip doesn't say whether signing up involves a credit check.

To transfer a Cash ISA in, request it in the app. It must be the whole ISA, one at a time, from a provider on Chip's list, and you can't close your Chip account while it's in progress. ISA rules allow up to 15 business days for a cash ISA to cash ISA transfer and 30 calendar days for other types, and your old provider may charge.

The Smart Cash ISA has a 14-day cooling-off period from opening; cancel in that time and the money you paid in doesn't count towards your allowance. After that, transferring it out or closing it costs you any interest not yet paid, and you can't open another Smart Cash ISA with Chip in the same tax year. Slow transfers out come up often in user reviews, so start one well before you need the money.

To close your Chip account, give notice from the Profile menu in the app; to close a single savings account, contact support by chat or email. An investment account can only be closed by closing your whole Chip account, and then you can't open one again. Chip may close Instant Access or the Smart Cash ISA after six months at £0, and any account with a zero balance over 12 months.

Consider it if you want an app-only easy-access account or flexible Cash ISA at a boosted rate for a year, if you can leave £1,000 in Instant Access or the ISA for 90 days and want the £50 on top, or if you'd enjoy a prize draw instead of interest. The free Basic plan is enough for saving.

Skip it if you need phone support or a branch, if you might want to move an ISA out in a hurry, if you're counting on the boosted rate lasting beyond 12 months, or if you'd invest small amounts on Basic, where the £1 monthly minimum is 1.2% a year on £1,000. And if the bonus is the only reason, remember it's £50 for £1,000 held 90 days, paid out as cash only when you empty your Chip account.