How do you compete with Bank of America, WaMU, and the other majors that saturate the market with fancy branches and large ATM networks backed by nine-figure marketing budgets? Increasingly, financial institutions are taking the battle to the Web, where a community bank or credit union can build an equally impressive website, gain the attention of prospective customers, and tell their story. 

An important part of that story is the rate advantage, especially when major banks continue to pay nearly zero interest on balances under $5,000 in standard checking and savings accounts. But few institutions actually show direct competitive comparisons, and when they do, they are usually buried three or four screens off the homepage.

Not so at Sacramento-based Safe Credit Union <safecu.org>. The 120,000 member CU posts its rates on the upper-right side of its homepage (see screenshot below). And each product includes a one-click rate comparison to the right of the APY (see above right). Users can select rate comparison on a $1, $2000, or $10,000 checking account balance.

Clicking Compare causes the box to expand within the home page to show a numerical and graphical comparison to three key competitors, BofA, WaMU, and Wells Fargo (see lower right).

This is a great way to showcase your rate advantage, while not overly cluttering your homepage. Along with the Progressive Insurance comparison "ticker" (here), this is the one of the best rate comparison tactics we've ever seen.

Deposit rates are provided by Market Rates Insight, a long-time provider of deposit rates to more than 1,000 U.S. financial institutions.

Note: The Safe Credit Union homepage is currently running a clever flash-based promo comparing the toaster you get with "their checking" to the chance you could win a LCD television with a Safe account (screenshot taken, 2 March 2007, 10 AM Pacific).