I was reading about this bank offer recently where apparently for signing up for a bank account with them along with some other stipulations they will literally give you $250 for free. This is apparently only for BC residents at some back called Envision Financial that you can read about at https://www.envisionfinancial.ca/Personal/ProductsAndServices/NewMemberOffer/ .
It just sounds like a lot of money to get people to use your service. I think at most I have seen from banks are giveaways of say $100 ipods to entice people to join. It’s usually only services that require you to sign say three year contracts that usually offer you rewards along that price range from my experience.
Then again, maybe it is an effective use of marketing money as I’m sure it gets a lot of word of mouth attention. I can see a lot of hardcore savers who would create an account just to close it after getting the offer too though.