Zynlo and Quontic both sell an online money market account with no monthly fee and a rate that sits near the top of the comparison tables most weeks. That is where the resemblance ends. Zynlo is not a bank; it is a brand name that PeoplesBank of Holyoke, Massachusetts, uses for its online accounts, and money deposited there is a deposit at PeoplesBank under PeoplesBank's FDIC certificate. Quontic is a bank in its own right — a federally chartered savings bank in Queens, New York, supervised by the OCC and certified by the Treasury as a community development financial institution. One account has no minimum, no fees and, on its disclosure, no transaction limits, but no debit card and no cheques. The other needs $100 to open, comes with a card and a chequebook, and publishes three balance tiers. Those are the things that will still be true in a year. The rates will not be, which is why neither is printed here.
The house reason for that is on the hub and on finding the real money market rate: a page that prints today's figure is wrong on a date nobody notices, and both banks' rate sheets are one click away. What follows is the structure — who holds the charter, what the disclosures actually say, and what to verify before opening either.
Zynlo: one brand, one charter, and it is not Zynlo's
Zynlo's own footer says it: 'A division of PeoplesBank, Holyoke, MA'. The FDIC's BankFind confirms the rest: FDIC certificate 90213, a state-chartered savings institution supervised by the FDIC, established in 1885, with 21 offices and roughly $4.6 billion in assets at the June 2026 call report. PeoplesBank describes itself as a mutual bank. There is no FDIC certificate in the name Zynlo, because Zynlo is not an institution; it is a registered trademark. When the account terms say 'we', they define the word as 'the Bank, ZYNLO BANK', and the terms are governed by Massachusetts law.
This is the 'two brands, one charter' trap that are money market accounts FDIC insured describes in general terms, and here it has a specific shape. FDIC coverage is $250,000 per depositor, per insured bank, per ownership category. A saver who already banks at a PeoplesBank branch in western Massachusetts and opens a Zynlo money market account online has not spread money across two banks. On illustrative numbers, $180,000 in a PeoplesBank branch account plus $120,000 at Zynlo is $300,000 at one FDIC certificate, and $50,000 of it sits above the limit in a single ownership category. The fix is the same as at any bank — a second ownership category, a named beneficiary, or a genuinely different bank — and are CDs FDIC insured sets out how the categories work.
There is a Massachusetts wrinkle that looks as though it softens the trap, and it does not survive a check. Zynlo's footer image carries the words 'FDIC Insured and DIF Member'. The DIF is the Depositors Insurance Fund, a private, industry-sponsored fund established by the Massachusetts legislature in 1934 that, in its own words, insures deposit accounts above FDIC limits at its member banks, which are savings and co-operative banks chartered in Massachusetts. It is not the FDIC, it is not a federal agency, and it has nothing to do with the NCUA's share insurance for credit unions; it is a third thing with its own membership and its own terms, and the FDIC has no view on it. PeoplesBank is not on the DIF's own published list of member banks, and PeoplesBank's own deposit-insurance page does not mention the DIF at all. Do not plan around cover above $250,000 here until the bank confirms membership in writing.
What Zynlo's disclosures say the money market account is
Zynlo publishes a consolidated account-opening packet, and the version in force on the day checked was effective 1 September 2026. Its Truth in Savings section for the ZYNLO Money Market Account is short and unusually clean:
- No minimum deposit to open. A minimum daily balance of $0.01 to earn the disclosed APY.
- No monthly maintenance charge at any balance.
- Interest compounded daily and credited monthly, by the daily balance method. If you close the account before interest is credited, you do not receive the accrued interest — on illustrative numbers, $20,000 at 3.50% closed after 27 days of a monthly cycle forfeits about $52 of accrued interest.
- The rate is variable, may change at any time, and has no stated maximum or minimum.
- 'No transaction limitations apply to this account.'
- An account that sits at $0.00 for 30 days may be closed without notice.
The fee schedule, effective 2 September 2025, lists $0 against every line — maintenance, minimum balance, inactivity, early closure, non-sufficient funds, overdraft, stop payment, out-of-network ATM — except a $20 escheatment fee when an abandoned account is turned over to the state. A fee schedule that is genuinely all zeros is rare enough to be worth reading in full, and it takes about a minute.
Three things the disclosures do not say are the ones that matter for how the account gets used.
No tiers, and no cap. The packet lists no balance tiers, and the rate sheet has one line for the money market account. A review from 2023 described a lower rate on balances above $250,000; nothing in the current disclosure or rate sheet says so. Treat that as historical, and check the rate sheet's tier column on the day you open — on the day checked, there was no such column.
No card, no cheques. The product page says 'unlimited transactions' and the disclosure says no limitations apply, but neither describes a debit card or cheque-writing on the money market account. The 55,000-ATM network and the debit card belong to the spending account, and a December 2025 review states outright that the money market account has neither. In practice, then, 'unlimited' means transfers rather than a chequebook — and how unlimited those transfers are is not settled in the packet. The Truth in Savings section says no transaction limitations apply, but the same packet's online-banking terms say a transfer or payment from a money market account made through ZYNLO Online Banking is a restricted transfer subject to certain limitations, without stating them. The two sentences sit in one document and do not agree; ask the bank which governs before relying on unlimited external transfers. That is still a savings account with a different name — and in Zynlo's own packet the money market and savings products have identical minimums, identical fees and identical no-limit language, so the rate sheet is the only place they differ.
The match is not on this account. Zynlo advertises a round-up feature, ZYNG, that rounds debit-card purchases to the next dollar, moves the change from the spending account to the savings account, and matches it — 100% for the first 100 days, then 100% in any month after the spending account's average daily balance stayed at or above $3,000 every day of the previous month, otherwise 25%. Two things follow. The match is paid on the spending-plus-savings pair, not on the money market account, so a 'combined return' figure that includes it is not a money market rate. And the match is reported to the IRS as dividends on a Form 1099, which makes it taxable income of the kind bank account bonuses describes, not interest under another label.
One more line from the packet deserves a note. The September 2026 disclosure lists three money market products — the ZYNLO Money Market Account, a 'ZYNLO More Money Market Account' with identical printed terms, and a HomeSavings variant available only to verified members of a partner programme — while the rate sheet lists one. Which name is on your statement determines which rate applies; if you already hold a Zynlo account, check.
Quontic: its own charter, a CDFI, and an account you can spend from
Quontic Bank is FDIC certificate 57807, a federally chartered savings bank whose primary regulator is the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, with its main office in Astoria, Queens, one office in total and about $787 million in assets at June 2026. The charter dates from 2005 under a different name — Golden First Bank, a small Long Island institution that Steven Schnall bought in 2009, recapitalised, renamed and moved to Astoria in 2011 — and the bank has since gone branchless for deposit customers. In 2015 it was certified as a community development financial institution, a Treasury designation for lenders whose business serves low-income and underserved communities, and it has received CDFI Fund awards on the strength of it. None of that changes how the money market account pays interest; it explains why a digital bank with one office has the profile it has.
For insurance the point is the simple one: Quontic is one brand and one charter, with no branch network or parent bank sharing the certificate. Unless you hold other Quontic accounts, the $250,000 limit is yours alone.
Quontic's rate sheet, schedule of fees and federal-law disclosure are all public, and every structural claim below comes from them.
$100 to open. Small, but not zero, and Quontic's rate sheet says no minimum daily balance is required, so the rate applies from the first cent.
Three published tiers that currently pay the same. The account is disclosed as a 'tiered variable account' with tiers of $0.01 to $4,999.99, $5,000 to $149,999.99, and above $149,999.99, with one APY applied to all three on the day the rate sheet was checked. No introductory period — Quontic says in terms that there is no introductory rate period and that the rates shown apply to new and existing accounts alike. The top tier is open-ended, at balances over $149,999.99; the bank does not publish a maximum balance either way. This is the shape the rates page warns about: tiers that are cosmetic today are machinery the bank can use tomorrow, and a saver who reads 'one rate' and never looks again will not be told when that changes.
A debit card, cheques and about 90,000 ATMs. This is the money market account most people picture — an account you can spend from — and it is the genuine difference from Zynlo. The card is surcharge-free on the Allpoint, MoneyPass and SUM networks and at Citibank ATMs sited inside Target, Speedway, Walgreens, CVS, Kroger, Safeway, Winn Dixie and Circle K — about 90,000 machines, which Quontic says take withdrawals only and not deposits. The account supports mobile cheque deposit instead.
No transaction limit. Quontic's Truth in Savings disclosure for the money market account says in terms, 'No transaction limitations apply to this account', and the bank's schedule of fees carries no excess-transaction fee. Quontic describes the product as 'a checking account that offers a debit card and check-writing privileges' — the federal six-transfer rule was withdrawn in April 2020, banks may keep a limit as a term of the account, and Quontic has not. How a money market account works covers the history.
Other fees. No monthly fee. Quontic's published schedule of fees charges $25.00 plus correspondent charges on a domestic outgoing wire and $35.00 plus correspondent charges on a foreign one, and lists no fee on an incoming wire; a returned deposited item is $10.00; stop payment $20.00; and a dormant-account fee of $5.00 a month begins after 24 months of inactivity. Interest compounds daily and credits monthly.
Side by side
| Zynlo Money Market | Quontic Money Market | |
|---|---|---|
| Insured institution | PeoplesBank, Holyoke MA — FDIC cert 90213, shared with 21 branch offices | Quontic Bank, Astoria NY — FDIC cert 57807, its own |
| Charter and regulator | Massachusetts-chartered mutual savings bank; FDIC-supervised | Federal savings bank; OCC-supervised; certified CDFI |
| Cover above $250,000 | Claimed in a Zynlo footer image; PeoplesBank is not on the DIF's published member list | None beyond the FDIC |
| Minimum to open / to earn | $0 / $0.01 daily | $100 / none stated |
| Tiers | None disclosed | Three disclosed; same rate across all on the day checked |
| Monthly fee | $0 | $0 |
| Transaction limit | None, per the disclosure | None, per the disclosure |
| Debit card / cheques | Not offered on this account, per the disclosures and a 2025 review | Yes / yes |
| ATM access | Through the spending account only | About 90,000 network ATMs |
| Compounding / crediting | Daily / monthly; accrued interest forfeited if closed before crediting | Daily / monthly |
| Conditions on the rate | None — no direct deposit or activity requirement | None reported |
| Bonus mechanics | ZYNG round-up match on the spending-savings pair, not the MMA; taxable | None reported |
| Other money market names in force | 'More Money Market' and a members-only variant in the Sept 2026 packet | Not reported |
Two rows carry most of the decision. The debit card and cheques row says which account can be spent from; the insured-institution row says whether your money is at a bank you already use.
What the rate tables do not tell you
Zynlo's product page advertises its rate as a multiple of the national average, and cites the FDIC's monthly figure to do it. The FDIC number is real and the hub prints it with its date; what the multiple tells you is that most money market balances in the country sit at branch banks paying close to nothing. It says nothing about how Zynlo compares with the other online accounts it is actually competing with, which is the comparison a rate-shopper is making. Read the multiple as marketing, and compare the account with the other online rates on the same day, using the APY and not the interest rate, for the reason on APR vs APY.
Neither account attaches a condition to its rate — no direct deposit, no minimum activity, no paid tier — which is worth saying because the conditional design is now common enough that its absence is a feature. Both rates are variable and may change at any time, and both disclosures spell out that the account has no maximum or minimum interest rate limit — a clause every variable rate implies and few savers read.
Neither is a money market fund. The name overlaps; the product does not. Both of these are bank deposits under FDIC insurance, and the difference from an SEC-regulated fund that can lose value is on money market vs high-yield savings.
What to actually do
Count charters before you count rates. If you bank anywhere with PeoplesBank, Zynlo is the same bank for insurance purposes. If your combined balance there would pass $250,000 in one ownership category, get PeoplesBank to confirm its Depositors Insurance Fund membership in writing or use a different bank; do not rely on the footer, which is the only place the claim appears.
Decide whether you will spend from the account. If yes, Zynlo's money market account is the wrong product regardless of rate — it has no card and no cheques — and Quontic's is the right shape. If no, the card and the cheques are irrelevant and the two accounts are much closer than they look.
Read the tiers on Quontic's rate sheet, even though they pay the same. Diarise a check twice a year. A bank that discloses tiers has built the machinery to price them.
Open the disclosure PDF, not the product page. Zynlo's packet and fee schedule are on its disclosures page and are the source for every Zynlo fact above. Quontic's are on its site, and its fee schedule and Truth in Savings disclosure are the first things to open before you deposit $100. Quontic's disclosure currently says no transaction limitations apply to the account; confirm that has not changed, because a bank may add a limit as a term at any time.
Treat the match as a bonus, not a rate. Zynlo's round-up match lives on the spending-savings pair, has a $3,000 balance condition after 100 days, and is taxable. It does not raise the money market rate.
Keep the emergency fund's job in mind. Either account is a reasonable home for the earning part of it, and where to keep an emergency fund still argues for an instant-access buffer somewhere with a card — which, for a Zynlo customer, is the spending account rather than the money market account. Online banks for high-yield savings covers the three structures behind brands like these; Zynlo is the second of them and Quontic the first.
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