Starting 01 August 2025, you can now earn interest at 4.50% on Macquarie Savings Account up to $2M (was up to $1M).
Duplicate offer removed from deal title — Mod.
Also, note the welcome rate is 4.85% for the first four months on balances up to $250K.
Same as this deal, but the first tier is now $2M from 01 August 2025.
Wait until they get enough people moving their savings there. It won't happen overnight but it will happen.
Maybe they're born with it?
And watch what happens when they do that, and all the 1+m accounts move that aren't insured by the federal guarantee. would be pretty grim if they collapsed. Although, the gov would insure the sums I imagine, like they did with first national, cause they don't need a banking meltdown again.
There's currently more in savings swirling around then banks need for their Teir 1 loan requirements.
I imagine though as interest rates lower, some of those savings will move out, looking for better returns, so banks cant get too onerous.
Customer deposits do not impact capital requirements. The deposit is a liability and the cash is a zero risk weighted asset. At a stretch a term deposit could collaterise a loan and net the exposure but that's not too common.
seems people are having less and less money. i read in yahoo that more than 9 million Australians have less than $ 1000 in their savings account.
Macquarie needs the deposits as it’s home loan business continues to grow rapidly.
$3.3b net growth last month and 19% of total growth over the last year.
I’d expect their desire for deposits to be strong for a while.
They DO impose a condition that I regard as a deal killer - that they require savings account customers to also open a "transaction account" to handle the day to day in's and out's of your money. It is a real hassle taking money back and forth between the two accounts to get interest on your money in the "savings" account yet have enough but not too much money in your non-interest bearing transaction account.
In my experience, and with my usage, this is enough of a non-issue that this potential pita is nothing.
I don't want a debit card that is linked to my savings account, and I use credit card for daily protections. Direct debit from this savings account to the credit cards each months works without hassle.
On the rare occasions I need to transfer money to the transaction account, it happens instantly via the app.
Really, unless your usage of the account is markedly different, this isn't a biggie.
But how many people here on OB have over $1M in cash looking for a new home ?????
If you had this cash on hand you would be buying a new home…Right?
Not necessarily. It’s wise to have some cash on hand right now rather than tied up in property.
Restrictions?
None of the hoops like other banks & I hope it stays that way! No deposit requirements, no grow your balance, no withdrawal restrictions. Whatever is in the account overnight will accrue daily interest and paid monthly. Can send payments externally and via BPay directly from the savings account, instantly and also scheduled.
4.85% intro rate for the first 4 months on up to $250k. 4.5% thereafter. Pair it with an international fee free debit card on their transaction account. Any balance in the transaction account also gets 2.25% savings interest as well.
Their mobile app and internet banking is also pretty sleek.
Pretty good by that
Not to mention no stupidly low daily transaction limit with the other Neobanks. Macquarie authenticator lets u do 100k daily transfer.
Not sure about other banks but I've been able to transfer over $100k from UBank previously by calling up.
You forgot free atm withdrawals, even from those dodgy convenience and pub ones :)
Do they reimburse the fee like ING with no hoops?
@BluebirdV: Yes, as soon as you get charged one the app pops up a message telling you about it and that it’s refunded
Can you set direct debits to come straight from the Savings Account?
Yes. I have ongoing direct debit straight to my Macquarie savings account for credit card payment.
@OrionBargainHunter: Question - I set up a bunch of direct debits from my lower interest Macquarie transaction account, thinking it wouldn't work with the higher interest savings account, but now I'm reading it would.
Last I looked it seemed the only thing the savings account didn't have that the transaction account did, was a debit card.
Anyone know any other significant differences ?
As I may just want to move my funds to savings and also my direct debits.
Oh - can you have a joint savings account ?
Excellent bank, especially with this ‘set and forget’ style savings account. No hoops to jump through to get the advertised rate, which is refreshing. As long as they keep it simple and consistent, it’s a great option. Hopefully it stays this way!
Fingers crossed aye.
If people kicked up a stink I'm sure apra would be onto the banks penalising you with no interest for not jumping hoops - the penalty is not equal to the crime - but this is straya no one cares.
Great spot Op, will park my 2m here!
Wonder if you can have multiple accounts if you have more than 2m, asking for a friend.
Yes you can but it’s a bit tricky.
Good find, just need the 2 milly now.
With the number of houses over the $1m mark these days, a few people will have use for this. If someone recently sold a house but hasn't yet bought their next one, this account would give them several thousand dollars per month in the meantime.
would give them several thousand dollars per month in the meantime
Counting as income for ATO.
Give and shall receive … a tax bill
Good bank, but they havent reported the interest incurred to the ato for the tax return for the FY yet. Fancy debit card without any atm withdrawal fee. Highly recommend
They usually do it by end of August, not sure why it takes them so long.
I'm also facing the same issue where they haven't updated my interest received for the FY :(
No eftpos support on the card though
Not really a biggie in my opinion….
You could always calculate it yourself and enter it manually.
Yeah I don't know why they take so long to upload the prefill data to ATO for their regular bank accounts. But you can easily see the amount of interest you earned in the previous FY in the app, so can still do your tax now if you want.
Funny, I just did my tax return today, but the app tells you the total interest earned in the financial year.
Thanks for calling out, also noticed this and found it odd not on ATO pre fill. Entered it manually based on 6 monthly statements so no biggie.
The delay is quite annoying for the convience factor.
For everyone not wanting to wait, you can generate a report for your accounts - no need to calculate based on monthly reports
I read somewhere else that Macquarie Bank don't support eftpos
Correct. Macquarie card is a debit Mastercard only, not a dual network card.
Biggest implications are merchant fees are a % basis rather than per transaction, and can’t get cash out at the checkout (ATMs only)
And no instant transactions (ie no 'pending' purchases, or instant refunds), or Medicare refunds.
You still get a bsb and account. Why is that not sufficient for Medicare refunds?
@soan papdi: Yes you can still get it via a regular bank deposit - however some medical practices will instantly refund you on the spot via eftpos if your card supports it.
or Medicare refunds
Only where the practice uses Medicare Easyclaim, where the funds get put back onto a non-credit account on the spot.
Medicare Online is different and the $ will go wherever you have setup with Services Australia
Also doesn’t support Beem, which I found out when trying to add my card this morning.
Beem uses eftpos
Next month they are enforcing growing balance requirements, technically a similar offer right now, but come next month it's far from the same.
UBank also doesn't allow you to send funds externally from the savings account, if you want to schedule external payments you have to do it from a Spend account and take the funds out of a Savings account a day or more before the scheduled payment is due to execute.
You mean from October not next month.
Yep, October, my bad.
@sghetti: still, it will take about that long to move 1m$ from ubank to macqaurie unless you call them to up the limit.
Major difference being the growth requirement from 1st of October though
They dropped it to 4.6% 2 weeks ago.
thats a welcome rate for 4 months.
Hasn't been 5% for ages. 4.6% now. Keep up.
Both banks have a 4 month intro sweetener rate for new customers. Ignoring that, yes Ubank is currently 0.1% higher than Macq (4.6 vs 4.5%) but the incoming Ubank requirement to grow balance each month is a deal breaker for some people. If you need to withdraw a chunk just one month of the year and miss out on the bonus rate with Ubank, your actual net rate for the year becomes about 4.22%.
Wow that was the easiest account creation I'd ever experienced with banks. I can also transfer money out directly from the savings account. Bye ubank.
Edit: spoke too soon. Account locked. Apparently they have a different account on file that had a different phone number etc. No access whatsoever and told me to call back tomorrow. It's only 25 minutes waiting on the phone.
Man just had the same thing this is pretty bad, had a proper go at them on the phone
Yeah I rarely lose it on the phone, but they kept asking me about the physical welcome pack I received when I opened my account, after I’ve said many times I opened it an hour ago. Then they tried their best to direct my future queries to their online chat. I’m like, you can’t even get it when I’m doing this synchronously, what are my chances with your outsourced chat human bots? Seems to be another one of these experiences where the unhappy path is really unhappy.
That's a reasonable security function.
Wait isn't great though.
It not reasonable if they have pre-made your account somehow and lost the sync between that and the real one. That’s what happened. I’m not calling until Monday, gonna enjoy the weekend with my coins and gift cards.
its a pretty shit customer experience having it locked out 10 min after creating an account, i am not going to be using them ongoing
It sounds great until they lock you out of your own account and refuse to elaborate further
Care to elaborate?
He's talking about bankruptcy
Banks can close accounts at any point at their own discretion and ask you to move your funds on elsewhere. But, banks aren't in a habit of doing this unless there's suspicious activity going on.
Given they supposedly didn't elaborate, I'll hazard a guess that it was risk/red flags for the account and they won't elaborate to give away their position to people who are trying to skirt their risk measures.
I've sent large amounts of funds to crypto exchanges in the past via UBank, they locked my account temporarily, called up and sorted it out with them. They essentially told me not to do it anymore (I'm going to assume they would've gone down the route of closing my accounts if I continued). Moved funds elsewhere to send on to exchanges with no issues.
Sure - I planned to move my family's finances to them a couple of years ago
So I opened an account on a Friday, Osko'd in some money, set up my online banking
Went to sleep, in the morning tried to log in and everything was disabled
Some run-around later, I got my money back, but googling it it's happened to plenty of other people. There's even some people talking about it on Ozb a while back https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/855815 there's also similar on ausfinance subreddit, whirlpool etc.
It's funny how everyone assumes it's some fault of my own, I wish them good luck with their own accounts. I'm about as milquetoast as they come and no, not bankrupt lol. My name is pretty unique but not like terrorist unique or something stupid like that and I have never had it happen with any other bank
Sucks TBH as I also need somewhere to go after ubank's changes..
That sucks, seemingly innocuous! Are you by any chance a citizen for tax purposes of another country other than Australia? I believe Australian banks have restrictions on how many customers they can have on their books where they are deemed overseas or citizens for tax purposes in other countries, or perhaps self imposed limits from a risk perspective. They may be close to those limits and chose to not do business to keep under those thresholds.
@sghetti: They don’t ask if you are a citizen btw. Only residents for tax purposes. The same thing happened to me and I’m a citizen.
Well, sure, it's why I have NAB, WISE, Bankwest and Macquarie in case I get stuck. I have been dicked about by NAB, Bankwest and Macquaire over the decades with account suspensions that's needed from days to weeks to sort out.
None of the banks elaborate as to why though, so I've always assumed some sort of false positive on fraud.
Probably irrelevant, but wouldn't this deal (from ME Bank) be a good/better alternative to this? https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/916701 - noting, the ME bank is only upto $100,000, and I understand that ME bank requires $2k plus deposit (however the growth requirement seems to have gone).
Everyone must have 2mil.
P&N bank has 4.75% for 100k too with $500 deposit and 5 transactions requirement. Growing the account is the one that I hate the most.
PnN you don't have to grow your account. The $500 is a deposit into your transaction account, you should be able to take it back out straight away.
Pretty disappointed that all the banks are lowering interest rates even though RBA kept them on hold. I'd be surprised if they lowered their lending rates.
I know that's why I'm mentioned them.
I am currently using their sister bank BCU without issues. I am sad that they reduced their rate from 4.9 to 4.75 today, but I otherwise have no complaints.
I've used them for about 9 months. Works well. The only thing I don't like is withdrawal is capped at $100k a day.
it limits you capacity to buy more than 1 high-yield investment a day?
I dabble in the share market, but when I'm not holding shares if I leave it in the broker site account it earns no interest, so I move it to a bank account (which I can do in one transaction). When I want to move it back into the broker site I want to do it ASAP so a large limit helps. ANZ Plus can do $250k a day.
I'm joking mate.
Using IB gets you 3.83% atm what broker are you using that gets you nothing?
I just buy AAA or QPON when I have extra cash so that it is available ASAP if I want to buy something else.
@wfdTamar: Correct, but it all depends on how long you transfer out. With AAA you can buy straight away as opposed to waiting for T+2 to transfer.
Time to migrate from enshittified Up Bank
Agreed - their latest grow and flow crap is designed to keep money hostage.
So much for trying to be a flexible neobank
..plus the material looks like it was drawn by a 10 year old…..
Yep… bye bye ubank
Damn. Have just over $2M so will have to pass
I was worried that Macquarie were going to follow other banks and put conditions on achieving their bonus rate when I saw this post…