Now that every bank is facing compressed margin in consumer banking with the inverted yield curve, it is no wonder that they are promoting more comprehensive reward programs for customer loyalty. Unfortunately, most banking services like checking account, savings account and credit card are already commoditized, and I doubt many will seriously consider moving accounts around just for a few more reward points. By the way, earning a cruise solely by writing checks is probably an exaggeration -- it will require you to write 16,800 checks, or 100 checks a month for 14 years. One's interest can be better served by picking up a juicy reward credit card like Citi's Driver's Edge, which offers 6% rebate on gas, grocery and drugstore purchase for 12 months (PFBlog review).

Banks used to give you a free toaster when you opened a savings account. Now they want to give you Royal Caribbean cruises and Tumi luggage for taking out a loan, paying your bills online and writing checks.

Building on programs that reward customers for using debit and credit cards, banks are rolling out deals that allow customers to accumulate points for just about every transaction they complete and for every account they open. The goal: getting customers to use more of their everyday bank's services, instead of spreading their business around to rivals.

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At National City, which has 1,200 bank branches from Missouri to Pennsylvania, customers who enroll in the "Points from National City" program have 22 different ways to rack up points. Taking out a mortgage generates 50,000 points, and the reward for adding direct deposit to an existing checking account or using a debit card for the first time is 5,000 points. Customers accumulate 25 points every time they write a check, plus additional points for using their credit or debit cards, just as they would in a traditional rewards program.

The points can be redeemed for more than 100 items in National City's rewards catalog, such as a four-night Royal Caribbean cruise or a Fuji 21-speed mountain bike. The Cleveland bank started its rewards program in March and now has 335,000 participants -- or more than 10% of the bank's customer base.