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ME Bank - Online Savings Account (with Ongoing Bonus) - 3.35% Interest

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ME Bank - Online Savings Account (with Ongoing Bonus) - 3.35% Interest
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moksha on 11/05/2016 - 10:08 mebank.com.au (521 clicks)
Last edited 28/08/2016 - 12:31

This is the highest ongoing interest rate for a savings account available at the moment.

There are a few higher ones, but have a 3 or 4 month limit on the bonus. http://www.infochoice.com.au/banking/savings-account/list.as…

ING Direct has gone down to 3%
The next best interest rate I can find for an account that doesnt limit withdrawals is UBank at 3.12%

Please see the discussion in the previous deal for more information https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/232751

To receive bonus interest on your Online Savings Account for any calendar month you must have an Everyday Transaction Account (ETA) and during that month make a weekly purchase with your ETA debit MasterCardTM using PayPass Tap&Go. Bonus interest is only payable on balances up to $250,000 on the first OSA you open. You’re automatically eligible for bonus interest unless it was opened before 10/08/15, in which case you’re only eligible upon request. Further T&Cs available at mebank.com.au.

rates

Variable base rate 1.55% p.a.*

Variable bonus rate^ 1.80% p.a.*

Referral Links

Referral: random (34)

$150 Coles Group & Myer Gift Card for both referree and referrer when loans are settled.

Financial Bank Account Savings Account

Related Stores

ME Bank
ME Bank

closed Comments

  • payton on 11/05/2016 - 10:15
    +7

    The weekly spend req is just a chore.

    • moksha on 11/05/2016 - 10:29
      +5

      If you have the full $250,000… the difference between this account and the UBank account is $575 in interest per year. I think the chore is worth it, for some people.

      • spendinghacker on 11/05/2016 - 10:41
        +2

        Fair point but keep in mind that this extra interested is before tax

        • dan76n on 11/05/2016 - 12:56

          Not if it's your only income.

      • payton on 11/05/2016 - 12:27
        +6

        If you forget to do the weekly tap just once in the year, you'll wipe out your interest for the whole month.
        On a $250K account, this is a loss of approx $697 per month and this once-off disaster would wipe out the advantages of this account compared to others that don't require a weekly task.

        • moksha on 16/05/2016 - 07:27

          By my calculations, the loss is $375, not $697. You dont lose the whole of the interest for the month, just the bonus portion.

      • momov3 on 12/05/2016 - 12:24

        I would have thought your MOJO account has no more than $50K, the remaining $200K is better invested in index funds/stock because you get higher returns in the long run.

      • rifter on 03/06/2016 - 09:21
        +1

        Much greater difference because at $250,000 your ubank account is over 200k and not be getting 3.12% interest.

    • spendinghacker on 11/05/2016 - 10:40

      Agreed!

      ME Bank are smart though. They've figured out how to make this bonus rate work for them and give ING a run for its money.

      Unless you resort to weekly reminders and the like, the only way you can consistently get the higher rate is by making The ME Bank OTA your primary transaction account.

      Well played ME Bank.

      ING, your move…

      • squeeb on 11/05/2016 - 11:01

        Good point about the reminders, however, there is no restriction on the dollar amount of tap and goes so you can certainly use it in conjunction with another transaction account eg ING and get your 2% cashback. This is what alot of Ozbargainers do :) No hassle to have a few and still be making money.

    • [Deactivated] on 11/05/2016 - 12:30
      +3

      Shop once a week and make a pay pass purchase is not something most people do anyway?

  • kirt on 11/05/2016 - 10:24

    One of the best features for me with the ING account, is that you can use any ATM in Australia for free (yes, even those dodgy looking yum cha ones in the corner of the pub).

    Is that the same for this ME Bank account (looks like it might be Westpac ATM's only)?

    • spendinghacker on 11/05/2016 - 10:47
      +1

      I was able to haggle with them and get them to agree to reimburse all ATM operator fees for my mum.

      She doesn't get the 2% Paywave rebate like you get with ING but as she doesn't trust Paywave and refuses to use it (she didn't use it even when she was with ING), it doesn't matter.

      Call them or send a message through Internet banking and ask them to match the ING foreign ATM fee rebate.

      Def worth a try.

    • momov3 on 12/05/2016 - 12:20

      Thanks for that, I am looking into ING then. You mean those dodgy ATM machines outside the milk bar which charge $1 per transaction!

  • 50cent on 11/05/2016 - 10:26

    how much more money will i make compared to this?

    https://www.commbank.com.au/personal/accounts/savings-accoun…

    • squeeb on 11/05/2016 - 10:37
      +4

      ME is 1% better. Depends on your account balance as to how much more you can make. CBA only allow one withdrawal per month. That is very restrictive for the percentage that they are offering.

      • 50cent on 11/05/2016 - 10:39

        so assuming i have 55k, how much more would i get?

        • spendinghacker on 11/05/2016 - 10:48

          $550 extra a year before tax

        • moksha on 11/05/2016 - 10:48

          an extra $550 a year

        • SuperC on 11/05/2016 - 10:51

          About $550 extra using the ME Bank account over the commonwealth one.

        • Meconium on 11/05/2016 - 11:06

          Roughly $550 extra a year

        • 50cent on 11/05/2016 - 11:20

          @SuperC: wow thats good, is ME Bank's rate likely to stay the same?

        • Cheeper on 11/05/2016 - 12:30
          +2

          @50cent: Who knows… any of them could go up or down tomorrow.. no guarantees.

        • danyool on 11/05/2016 - 13:26
          +1

          @xywolap: ME bank's rate (combined nominal plus bonus rate) has been higher than the others - just catch is if u don't make a purchase one week - you don't get bonus rate, so it's lower than others.

        • Cheeper on 11/05/2016 - 22:15

          @danyool: So you say they guarantee their rate will never go down?.. which is what 50cent was asking..

        • spendinghacker on 12/05/2016 - 07:58

          @xywolap: no guarantees ever when it comes to at-call saving rates.

          If you want to lock-in a certain rate and be guaranteed a certain amount of earned interest, your only option is a term deposit but then you can't touch your money during that term and your rate will almost certainly be lower than the best at-call rate available at the time

        • Cheeper on 12/05/2016 - 09:33
          +1

          @ginmi: We know that… the question was… " is ME Bank's rate likely to stay the same?" with their non term deposit acct.
          Simply… the answer is no.

  • dynamike on 11/05/2016 - 10:49
    +2

    Good effort OP. One of the few deals that lets you save money without spending.

    Saves the time of having to review myself. Should be a quarterly if not monthly comparison on Ozbargain.

  • Ametric on 11/05/2016 - 10:49
    +2

    The customer service in ME very bad from my experience, ING 2% paywave is very nice bonus and all ATM are free if you transfer at least $1000 per month there… The ME mobile application is horror, but, anyway I'm waiting the next move from ING :)

    • oztonyau on 11/05/2016 - 11:04

      Agree that ING paywave 2% is good, but it is quite possible to use both offers simultaneously. ME only requires one paypass transaction a week, with no minimum amount. By the way, their weeks end on a Tuesday.
      Have never had a problem with ME customer service. ME allows two way communication online: For non-urgent enquiries I send them a message when logged in to my account and get a reply within 24 hours, without having to ring, which is convenient. Does any other financial institution do that? I don't know of one. MEBank mobile android app has never failed me.

      • Ametric on 11/05/2016 - 11:13

        sure, everyone has its own experience, when I opened the ING account, I was with Westpac as my main bank (still using it), and thought I would use ING only for savings, but I so liked it, so now it's my main account :)

  • c64 on 11/05/2016 - 11:17
    +3

    the requirements of doing a paypass transaction every 6 days is a pita and there is potential to forget and then lose a heap of interest

    what happens when you want to go on a holiday or become sick?

    • oztonyau on 11/05/2016 - 12:01
      +1

      Both your points are valid. The inconvenience equation is 1) Inconvenience of doing a paypass transaction every week; Vs 2) Inconvenience of moving money around every three or four months to obtain bonus interest elsewhere. I opted for the former as less inconvenient.
      Last time I went on holiday (for 6 weeks), they kept the interest at the bonus rate, after ringing them about it before leaving. Have noticed that their system doesn't seem to stop the bonus interest if you miss a week now and again.

  • squanchy on 11/05/2016 - 13:01
    +3

    When did ING lower their interest rate? They didn't even give any notice…

    • [Deactivated] on 11/05/2016 - 14:37
      +2

      Once before rba, again after, without informing people.

    • tdw on 11/05/2016 - 14:44
      +1

      May 1st, they dropped it to 3.25%. May 6, they dropped it again to 3%. I only saw messages about this on May 7 :\

  • bluesky on 11/05/2016 - 14:31
    +1

    Thanks Moksha, for the post and analysis. Very useful.

  • grips on 11/05/2016 - 15:10

    ING sent notice on the 6th of May, check your messages.

  • tarawa on 11/05/2016 - 19:38

    Could the weekly tap and go requirement just be a 1 cent tap (for example, a split payment of 1 cent on a woolworths self checkout) or does the weekly tap have a minimum requirement?

    • bluesky on 11/05/2016 - 20:21
      +1

      Technically, there is no amount requirement. But I suspect that if too many people are doing very low value paypass, like 1c :-), they may retract the deal or make the conditions more stringent.

      Or perhaps like ING (for those who did multiple split $99 paypass) they might contact the persons involve, and tell them that it is not in the spirit of the deal, and so they should not continue to do so, or else, be excluded from the deal.

  • tim_geo on 15/05/2016 - 00:55

    Could someone check if what I'm thinking is right:
    ME Bank: 3.35%, UBank: 3.12%
    Extra interest for using ME Bank: 0.23%

    Interest lost for forgetting to make a Paypass tranasaction: 3.12% - 1.55% = 1.57%.
    So it takes 1.57/0.23 = 7 months or around 30 weeks of not forgetting to break even from a forgotten week of Paypass, compared to leaving the money at ubank.

    • moksha on 15/05/2016 - 11:23
      +1

      I think instead of the 1.57% lost, you should use 1.8%, which is the variable component of the MEBank interest.

      So it would be 1.8/.23 = 7.8 months or 34 weeks, if my maths is correct.

    • WaywardOne on 24/08/2016 - 07:12

      I thought of it this way:
      Each forgotten week of paypass reduces the monthly interest rate by 1.8%, or 0.15% annually.

      Hence the interest rate starts at 3.35%, and one forgotten week it reduces to 3.20%. Forget once more an it's 3.05%. RAMS ongoing rate of 3.15% is now superior.

      I know this is an old thread, but it was this calculation that made me give up on mebank just recently.

      • moksha on 24/08/2016 - 09:52

        I see what you are saying, but for me RAMS has the same problem in a different way, that you lose the month's bonus interest if you make a withdrawal.

        I do spend the money in my savings account, and so I dont want to lose the bonus interest on the entire account for taking out a few hundred dollars.

        The MEBank account wont have the same problem of "forgetting" when people no longer want to use their ING Direct cards for paywave at the end of September! It wont seem such a problem to just use the MEBank account for all paywave transactions ;-)

  • spendinghacker on 24/08/2016 - 07:42

    Keep in mind that ME Bank is currently the only one in Australia to offer ATM fee rebates WITHOUT requiring to meet any monthly deposit/'shuffling' requirements.

    Worth keeping in mind when comparing against the competition

  • momov3 on 24/08/2016 - 08:16
    +2

    Just to clarify that UBank is no more 3.12%, after interest rates were dropped 0.25 pts, they did what the big banks did. Gave 0.13 reduction to borrowers but their online rates dropped the full 0.25% from 3.12 to 2.87. Was not publicised on their Facebook page, only made a big deal about the 0.13 drop in mortgage rates. Term deposit rates may be a little higher than that already and may move funds again.

    • spendinghacker on 24/08/2016 - 08:36

      ME Bank haven't lowered their deposit rates yet following the RBA rate reduction.

      Will be interesting to see how much they lower theirs by once they do.

      My bet: full 25 basis points

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