Sign-Up Bonus Checklist: 10 Things to Verify Before You Deposit

Sign-up bonuses look simple from the outside: enter a code, deposit some money, collect a reward. In practice, most of them are small contracts with a dozen conditions attached, and the conditions are where people lose money — or at least lose an afternoon arguing with support chat. The good news is that vetting an offer takes about ten minutes if you know what to check. This is the checklist we run before listing any code on this site, adapted so you can run it yourself on any offer, from any source, anywhere on the internet.

Work through the ten items in order. If an offer fails on items one or two, you can stop early and save yourself the other eight.

1. Confirm you’re actually eligible (especially by geography)

The single most common way a bonus dies is that you were never eligible in the first place. Platforms restrict offers by country, by state, and sometimes by whether you arrived through the right link. Crypto platforms are the sharpest example: Binance.com does not accept US residents at all (Binance.US is a separate, more limited company), and Roobet — a crypto casino — blocks both the US and the UK entirely. A referral page that pitches either of those to an American audience without saying so has already told you how carefully it checks things.

Look for the words “eligible jurisdictions,” “restricted territories,” or “available in” in the offer terms. If the terms don’t address geography at all, search the platform’s help center for your country before creating an account, because a VPN workaround typically violates the terms of service and voids the bonus anyway — usually at withdrawal time, which is the worst possible moment to find out.

2. Read the “new customer” definition

Nearly every bonus requires you to be a new customer, but platforms define “new” in different ways: new email address, new phone number, new government ID, new device, new household, or some combination. If you ever opened an account — even one you never funded, even years ago — you may already be disqualified. Closing an old account and reopening rarely resets your status, because the identity-verification layer remembers you.

One related trap worth stating plainly: on most platforms, referral codes cannot be added after registration. If you sign up first and try to attach the code later, support will almost always refuse, because the tracking happens at account creation. Decide whether you’re using a code before you click “create account.”

3. Write down the task and the deadline

Every bonus has a trigger: deposit $X, place a trade, complete a purchase, get an application approved. Every trigger has a clock: 7 days, 14 days, 30 days from signup. Both numbers matter, and both are usually in a different paragraph from the headline.

The trigger is not always what you’d guess. Robinhood’s gift-stock reward, for example, historically triggers on application approval — not on making a deposit — which trips up people who fund an account expecting that to be the qualifying step. Read the terms until you can complete this sentence: “I get the reward when I do ___ within ___ days.” If you can’t complete it, you don’t understand the offer yet.

4. Identify what form the reward takes

“Get $50” can mean five very different things: withdrawable cash, site credit that can only be spent on the platform, a voucher with its own expiry date, a fractional share of stock, or a fee discount that pays out slowly over months. These are not equivalent. Site credit at a store you’ll never shop at again is worth roughly nothing; a fee rebate is worth something only if you’ll generate fees. Binance’s referral structure is the classic example of the slow-drip kind — the invitee’s reward is a kickback on trading fees, capped at 20% of the referrer’s commission, so its value depends entirely on how much you trade rather than being a lump sum.

Also check the reward’s range honestly. “Up to $200” with no odds attached is marketing. Robinhood publishes a range of $5–$200 for its gift stock, and around 98% of recipients land at the bottom of it. Plan around the floor, treat the ceiling as a lottery ticket.

5. Check for wagering or holding requirements

A reward you can’t withdraw isn’t money yet. Casinos attach wagering requirements — you must bet the bonus (often 30–40 times over) before anything becomes withdrawable, and welcome offers at crypto casinos like Roobet always carry them. Brokerages use a gentler version: a holding period, where the gift stock or bonus cash must sit in your account for some number of days before you can sell or withdraw it.

Neither mechanism is a scam by itself; both are standard. But a page that advertises the bonus without mentioning the lock is hiding the offer’s real cost. Find the lock, put a number on it, and decide whether the reward is still worth it.

6. Know the KYC requirements before you start

KYC — “know your customer” — is the identity-verification process regulated platforms must run. For US brokerages that means a Social Security number (Robinhood requires one, and its program is US-only); for exchanges it usually means a government ID and a selfie. Two things to verify: whether you’re willing to hand this platform that information at all, and whether the bonus clock starts at signup or at verification approval. If verification takes five days and the deposit deadline is seven, you have a problem.

7. Read the clawback terms

Most bonus terms include a clawback clause: the platform can reclaim the reward if you close the account early, withdraw your deposit too soon, or are later judged to have violated the promotion rules. Common triggers are withdrawing within 30–90 days, self-referral (referring yourself with a second account), and anything the platform labels “bonus abuse” — a term defined, conveniently, by the platform. Know how long you need to stay put before the reward is genuinely yours.

8. Understand the tax treatment

In the US, sign-up and referral bonuses are generally taxable income, not discounts. Bank and brokerage bonuses commonly show up on a Form 1099-INT or Form 1099-MISC if they cross reporting thresholds — and the income is reportable even when no form arrives. Gift stock has a second wrinkle: its value when you receive it is income, and any gain after that is a capital gain when you sell. None of this makes bonuses a bad deal; it just means the headline number overstates the after-tax number, especially on larger rewards.

9. Ask whether the referrer is overstating the offer

The person sharing a code earns something when you use it — which is exactly why the FTC requires that connection to be disclosed, and why you should read referral pitches the way you’d read any ad. Warning signs: quoting only the “up to” ceiling, presenting a campaign-dependent bonus as guaranteed, omitting geographic restrictions, or claiming an offer is “expiring tonight” with no source. Honest referrers state the typical outcome next to the best case. It’s the standard we hold ourselves to — see how we verify codes and our disclosure page for the specifics.

10. Find where the official terms live — and save them

Every legitimate promotion has an official terms page on the merchant’s own domain. Before you deposit, find it, read it, and save a copy (a PDF print or a screenshot with a visible date). Promotional terms change, and if a dispute arises six weeks later, “the blog post said” carries no weight — the merchant’s own published terms, as they existed when you signed up, are your only useful evidence. If you cannot find official terms anywhere on the merchant’s site, that’s not a paperwork inconvenience; it’s your answer about the offer.

The two-minute version

Eligible? Actually new? Task and deadline written down? Reward form and realistic value known? Locks identified? KYC feasible in time? Clawback window noted? Taxes expected? Referrer honest? Official terms saved? If all ten are yes, deposit with a clear conscience. If any answer is “I couldn’t find it,” the offer hasn’t earned your money yet.