Robinhood's checking page says "Robinhood Checking and Savings is an added feature to existing Robinhood accounts and is not a separate account or a bank account."
I have not dug thought this specific offering but here is how it works in general it works this way:
Account has 3 parts:
1. Marketable securities -- value is NOT insured.
2. Cash on hand -- value IS ensured.
3. Money market fund -- value is NOT insured.
(3) may or may not be offered and if (3) is offered it has to be elected by the account holder. Money cannot flow from (1) to (3) or from (3) to (1) bypassing (2) due to securities regulations -- one cannot pay for one security with another security, a settled cash must be used.
If the APY is on (2) they will get killed by the fatwallet/slickdeals crowd. If the APY is on (3) it is more complicated but debit/check transactions against (3) are very expensive to clear so I don't quite see what the play is.
Robinhood's checking page says "Robinhood Checking and Savings is an added feature to existing Robinhood accounts and is not a separate account or a bank account."