I hear all sorts of good things about the Ubank saver account, but can I get some opinions on the spend account please? Any issues/problems? or do you find it a great account
ubank Transaction Account - Good / Bad?
coffeesnob085 on 01/09/2024 - 14:45
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I remember when ING used to offer cash back. Those were the days
They cut back to a measley 1% on utilities bills.
Actually I wonder how HSBC sustain this 2% cashback. Surely, it is a loss for them. At the back of my mind, this would come to a stop at anytime. So enjoy while we can. Just as ING, Hiver had stopped the cashback.
They earn money from the merchant fees and when you spend over $99 or when the cap limit of $50 cashback per month is reached. They also make money from your deposited funds.
That makes sense. Hope they find it worthwhile to continue offering this. I am clearly not one of their ideal customers - don't keep funds there, never bought over $99 and have never exceeded $50 cashback.
You use to be able to pay someone and bpay directly from saving account, now, you can't.
What does that have to do with OP's question?
OP said:
I hear all sorts of good things about the Ubank saver account
So I guess he was just providing insight into 1 not so good thing
So I guess he was just providing insight into 1 not so good thing
That wasn't the point of the thread though.
To answer OP's quesion though…
Its a fee-free transaction account.
As foxmulder above said but in lesser words - with a great Visa debit card
It does everything except cheques.
No it doesn't sing or dancePersonally I suggest the Macquarie Transaction account.
It does everything uBank spend and uBank Visa debit card does (and more)
AND pays a huge 4.75% interest as well.
You you only need one account.The only reason to have a uBank Spend account is if you have a heap of money to put into thier high interest (up to 5.5%) save account. Thats the only reason!
Sometimes for unknown reason, it disables transfer out, as I found with my account today, when I tried to transfer out to an external account. Over the years, accounts (save or spend) of this "new" ubank (formerly 86000 - not the old Ubank - that was rather trouble free) had been disabled quite a few times. And I have had to call up to enable transfer again.
Today's was more severe than in the past. Usually in the past, it disabled transfer to a specific account, and you could still transfer to some other account (basically an indirect route). But today, it disabled transfers out to all external accounts. And message said to contact customer support.
Fortunately, when old ubank and new ubank merged, it provided me another Spend account, and I could transfer out from that account. Otherwise, no transfers out until I could contact customer support. Also, I don't usually rely on this transaction account for day-to-day use, so impact so far is not that great.
Sounds like a lot of mucking around
If you decide to go with this account, make sure it is not your only transaction account, but have an alternate one as well.
Had a similar issue. Contacted support and in my case it was because I hadn't completed KYC requirements within the required deadline.
What is KYC?
Know Your Customer
Know Your Customer. Basically it's a proper ID check and verification.
@coffeesnob085: My understanding is that if they ask to complete KYC there's a few extra steps needed, including providing them with copies of your ID.
@coffeesnob085: Even after signup, every now and then (as in a few years or so) they ask you to do it again. That is what I've found. I've never been asked to provide ID again, just simply to answer some questions, or confirm some answers.
Mine was not KYC-related but wish it was since that would be an easy fix.
All I can say is it is a lot better now. In the past, a $5K transfer could easily trigger their system to block the account, which needed to be reset by calling.
Today's issue is a bit more mysterious - since I had not transferred out from this account recently, and the attempted transfer was small.
you can use their saver without using their transactional account for spending
If you’re looking to move banks, try Macquarie. Reasonable interest rate and no tricky requirements, transaction account itself pays interest, actual Mastercard exchange rate for foreign transactions, no international transaction fee. Only downside is lack of eftpos (pure Mastercard) but card works at the ATM.
Oh I need eftpos
Is this for Aldi or some other specific requirement? Up bank is another option. Same as Macquarie but no interest on the transaction account and has eftpos
I am vision impaired so prefer not to deal in cash as its a bit difficult.
@coffeesnob085: The Macquarie transaction account has a Mastercard debit card that you can use for purchases.
@soan papdi was only saying the Mastercard debit card only supports the Mastercard network. This is unusual for a bank-issued debit card in Australia, as most are dual-network debit cards that support eftpos and either Mastercard or Visa. The Macquarie Mastercard debit card does not support the eftpos network, which means you cannot do eftpos SAV / eftpos CHQ payments. eftpos SAV / eftpos CHQ would allow you to do eftpos cashout at merchants (but you said you would rather not deal with cash) and to avoid transaction fees at selected merchants (e.g. ALDI).
As an aside, eftpos (the payment network) is different from EFTPOS (the concept of paying for goods and services by using a payment card at a payment terminal). The Macquarie transaction account support EFTPOS (because it comes with a Mastercard debit card), but it does not support eftpos.
@WookieMonster: Didn't know this, no wonder when I've tried to insert/swipe card at aldi it hasn't worked.
I wonder if there is unauthorized use of a credit card that sourced from your own money - are we covered?
I had Ubank for years, but they stuffed their customers around so much that I’ve completely given up on them
Y'all might want to reconsider answering questions like this. IMHO not inconsiderable likelihood this is social engineering to learn which OzBargain members use UBank, for future scam and hack attempts.
It's a Transaction account. You put money in, you take money out, you use the debit card to spend. In that regard it's exactly the same as every other transaction account on the market. The main difference is probably the app and internet banking which have their idiosyncrasies, but it's perfectly serviceable. But so is Macquarie (which is also free), HSBC (which gives 2% back on purchases under $100… should be the ozbargain account of choice really) and a bunch of others.
Not that functional if you go by the above comments
I could in the past transfer cash out from Usaver. But of late I had to transfer from UsaverUltra only. Anybody know why?
They recently increased their base interest rate by .5% to offset this they ditched the pay from save feature.
They want more people to leave $ in a transaction account and not earn interest.
When you thought Ubank Customer Service could not get any worse they did this …
I have been a Ubank personal and SMSF customer since 2010. When they merged/converted I let all accounts close rather than move over.
Due to retirement planning, I decided to open a Ubank account again to use it for savings. I opened the new account mid July in 2024 but did not use it much but kept it active by moving money in and out. In fact I moved $2K from/to my HSBC account yesterday to keep the cashback bonus going in HSBC. To my surprice I received an email tihis morning from Ubank (went to SPAM) that they decided to close my accounst within 30 days due to their terms and conditions (basicaly for whatever reason some moron in customer service decided to do so). I tried to logon online to check if this was a genuine email (as I am not a smart phone user - only installed the app to sign up and then removed it). I could not logon. So I installed the smart app to sign in from there and again I could not logon with a "something went wrong message" een though they kept sending me an SMS code. It is obvious that they already killed my accounts and I could not logon. So much about the "within 30 days" - might as well have told me we have closed your accounts because we can and nobody can touch us. Screw them. I had to go and delete the ubank account from the payee lists of all my other bank accounts so I do not accidentally send any money to that account. As I said earlier I did send $2K yesterday and moved it out again. Just as well as it would have been stuck in the Ubank account and knowing how bad their customer service is, take forever if ever to get it back. Simply disgraceful customer treatment from Ubank.Stay away from them if you can bank elsewhere. They can close your accounts whenever they feel like it and if you have setup direct debits they wil screw you over and over again as they have done recently by the many unwanted changes they forced on their customers (like no diret debits or payments out of the save account). They are not about customer service and they know nothing about customer service.
I've had a Ubank account for over ten years. It works fine. They used to do an auto sweep between savings and debit account which was pretty handy. They generally have some of the highest savings rates.
You use to be able to pay someone and bpay directly from saving account, now, you can't.
You can use the visa debit for overseas purchase without any fees and very close to spot rate.
For day to day use, I use HSBC Global Saver which gives you 2% cashbacks.