ING Direct, renowned for its many contests that have created strong brand-buzz, is offering customers the chance to win one of five monthly $1,000 prizes. Any user with a new or existing automatic monthly deposit of at least $100 is entered into the sweepstakes. In addition to the monthly prizes, one grand prize winner will take home $30,000. The contest runs for six months, so the total payout is $60,000.

Low-cost incentives to encourage automated savings are a win-win (see note 1). The bank gets a stable flow of deposits to its savings products, and customers end up "paying themselves first" and developing a savings habit. We recently covered WaMu and Wachovia's efforts in this area (here). 

ING Direct Transfer Money area within online banking (logged in)

Same area showing second part of animated banner 

Note:

1. Unfortunately, the sweeps ended up costing me $700, although it went to a good cause. Since I'm a sucker for a contest, and I didn't have an eligible auto-debit, I went to the bank's Transfer Money page to set up a new one. In the process, I noticed that the auto debit for our son's allowance had ceased working in mid-2005 (note 2). We owed him 31 months of allowance plus interest. Ouch. After taxes, the $1k in prize money will just about get me to breakeven.  

2. The allowance transfer originates from another ING Direct account, which was likely out of funds in July 2005, so the transfer was canceled. It's up to the customer to reinstate the transfer, which evidently I never did.