Back in September I found out that the Commonwealth Bank of Australia offers a Debit Mastercard to persons aged 16 and upwards. Having been a member of the Australian Central Credit Union for as-long as I have needed to do banking I was hesitant at first about joining a new bank. I rang around my family asking if anyone was with the bank already and asking what they thought of them/if they had heard anything bad.
No one could tell me a single bad thing because no one was currently with them, I have been waiting until I turn 18 for a long time now so I could get my own card to use online with PayPal etc to stop using other peoples. So I went down to the bank and signed up for a Debit Mastercard* as well as 2 NetBank saver accounts.
The process was painless apart from the fact I’m a very impatient person and couldn’t wait for the card to come via snail mail. But once I got the card I went to my local ACCU branch and withdrew my money and put it into the new accounts. I will say the NetBank saver accounts are great, I’m earning much more interest per month. So far since the first of October I’ve earned $1.92 this month in 10 days which is more than I earned in my previous account per month.
Their online banking system is great, which is mainly all I use. I don’t really carry cash anymore as I always pay by card and did so even with my old bank. The only thing that really annoyed me was the fact transactions don’t show instantly on your account and it generally takes 2-3 days to show, Which they are slowly rectifying by rolling out Instant Transactions to all members which was a feature I really thought was missing.
The only thing I’ve been shocked by with them is the International transaction fee seen below.
*Note I’ve blanked out my account balance ;)*So far I’ve seen it range from $0.37 cents to a dollar depending on the amount of the transaction. So far I’ve been hit with $3.54 of these fees, but I haven’t even been with the bank for a month so imagine what I would have lost by the end of the year. They did not tell me about these fees when I joined so my question is for you folks, does your bank charge you these fees and if so are you with the CBA or another bank?
* I signed up for the Complete Access Debit Mastercard account due to me not having to pay any fees because I’m under 21, Study and receive a government pension.
These fees are international charges, just like if you have a mastercard credit card and do a purchase through an international buyer youll pay a percant of the fee to mastercard for the international purchase, should be in your terms and conditions
Ah, thanks. I tried looking through the terms and conditions.. Just couldn’t find anything. They didn’t explain this to me when I joined either.
Here, In America (US, Canada, Central and South America) most of the banks have eliminated that charge, so we don’t face it anymore.
We did for a while