I have been a USAA member using their financial products for 30 years. They are hard to beat on just about anything. That said, there are 2 very significant drawback with USAA checking. First, they don't have local branches. While that is somewhat offset by their ability to make deposits with scans of checks, they can't provide a signature guarantee unless you show up at one of their very few offices. Everyone will need a signature guarantee at some point and only a bank can give it, therefore, everyone will need a local account. The second drawback is their very non-competitive funds availability policy. Many local banks will give 100% next day or even same day availability on deposits. USAA will only give $5K availability next day for established customers. This is a problem if you write large checks and cover them with an ACH transfer or scanned check deposit from somewhere else, or if you want to sweep a large deposit to a higher yielding non-USAA account. I do all of that on a regular basis.