A money market account is a deposit account that is also considered a savings account, but the account has checks written upon it with a certain amount of restrictions. Some of the restrictions on a money market account is usually a high minimum balance, a restriction on the number of withdraws per month (typically the number is around six), and only three of those withdraws can be paid by check.

The high minimum balance is kept on the account so that the holder of the money market account can avoid fees. However, since the invention of online banking has taken off, there are many banks that offer higher interest rates on a lower balance. Some banks can offer a high interest rate on an initial deposit of only one dollar. For these types of online accounts, a debit card is often issued to make withdraws from the money market account more easily completed by the consumer.

So that banks can discourage customers from exceeding their limits on withdraw amounts or the balance of their accounts, many banks impose high fees on the customers who exceed their limits by any of these methods. Sometimes the banks will go so far as to close their accounts. Banks can impose additional restrictions on the account at their discretion. But the up side for the customers is the higher return on their account. Money market accounts usually offer a higher return for putting up with the restrictions on the account. The amount of return is usually competitive with the money market mutual funds.

Money market accounts differ from traditional savings accounts in that they require larger introductory deposits in order to take full advantage of the higher return interest rates.