The Credit Union Journal reported Friday that Beehive Credit Union joined the select number of CUs offering online-only accounts. Their product is a MMA with a minimum of $100 to open and $1,000 to earn interest – a whopping 4.80%!

At first glance I didn’t care for the minimum balance requirement – that is until I saw the rates and minimum balances on their traditional MMA that pays 1.85% on anything up to $10k. For their high-yield MMA the minimum to open the lowest-tier account is $30k and it pays 3.75%.

I’m excited to see this account offering from Beehive CU. Maybe it’s a sign that CUs are taking serious the inevitable movement of transactions further away from paper. It’s an area in which banks have a huge head start, but it’s not insurmountable. By the way, I’m still itching for the summer launch of ING Direct’s Electric Orange paperless checking account.

As Rob Rutkowski put it in a recent comment on Doug’s blog,

“It’s not just the NSF that will go extinct but the entire check processing system. Soon, people who write checks will be treated the same way as people who use rotary telephones.”