Transaction Accounts Comparison: Compare & Apply For Transaction Account Online

Featured Transaction Credit Card

As well choosing the right transaction account making the right decision for a transactor credit card is important for those who pay their credit card balance in full each month. The HSBC Credit Card is a great choice as it features up to 55 days interest free on purchases plus a $0 annual fee for the life of the card. This means it will effectively cost you nothing to use this card.

• $0 annual fee
• 16.99% p.a. on purchases
• 0% p.a. for 6 months on balance transfers
• Cash Advance Rate of 20.75%
• Minimum income requirement of $20,000 required to apply

Click here to read the HSBC Credit Card terms and conditions

If you have transaction accounts, or are thinking about getting one, you should learn more about them. Different accounts have different fee structures, and this article will explain them to you.

Transaction accounts are a deposit account where your money can be accessed at any time. You can transfer or withdraw amounts to others whenever the need arises. There is usually a low rate of interest offered on these accounts, due to the steady fluctuation of funds within them. They do offer a wide range of features and facilities, however, and usually with low fees.

Different types of transaction accounts:

Personal Transaction Accounts

These are the typical kind of transactional accounts that most people use. In many cases, this account allows you to perform an unlimited amount of transactions with other banks, and your bank, with a monthly flat fee. Some banks may give you the option of paying for each transaction separately.

All-in-one transaction accounts

These accounts are for day to day activities and are attached to a savings account that offers a high rate of interest. Money transfers between these two accounts will be done as soon as you put in the request since they are linked.

Basis transaction accounts

These transaction accounts are best suited for people that have limited income, such as people receiving Welfare or pensioners. They only offer a small amount of transactions that can be performed for free, but do not have any monthly fee to pay.

ATMs

ATMs can be used for a large variety of banking services, such as purchasing a phone credit that has been pre-paid, checking your balances or depositing checks or cash. They are available 7 days a week, 24 hours a day.

They are a convenient way to do your banking, but you should be aware that if you use an ATM that belongs to another financial institute other than the one you are currently using, that you will usually be charged a service fee of up to $2.50. If you do this quite often, it would be best to find an account that does not make you pay this charge.

You can get access to the EFTPOS system network with almost any ATM card that is issued from a transaction account in Australia.

Choosing the right transaction account

It is best to consider what kinds of transactions you will be performing the most before choosing your account. Some of these transactions include:

1. Cheques
2. ATMs
3. Bpay
4. EFTOS
5. An overdrawn account
6. Direct deposits
7. ATMs from other banks

The use of debit cards

You can use funds directly from your account with a MasterCard or Visa debit card. They are great for people that can’t control their spending habits with a regular credit card but still need to pay with a Visa or MasterCard for their purchases.

There are a lot of transaction accounts you can choose from, but now you can understand the benefits of each and decide which account would work best for you.

Transaction accounts, saving accounts, and general banking accounts. These are all financial products we use on a daily basis. What changes have been brought in over the last couple of years, and how good are the deals available to the Australian consumer?

No more fees if you please!

The amount of money that financial institutions had been making from customers in the form of bank fees were beginning to spiral out of control. It was said that Australian consumers had paid in the region of $1.9 billion in transaction accounts fees back in 2008, and the profit from fees was growing at a stupidly rapid rate of around 8% per year.

Penalties were the biggest earner for the banks, with default, bank dishonour, and overdrawn transaction fees being the biggest culprit. In fact the total income from such charges reached a massive $490 million in mid 2008.

It was beginning to feel like we were being charged unfairly and in excess. Consumer group CHOICE took on the banks in regards to the rising bank fees, and with the support of the public the major banks bowed under the pressure, and began reducing their fees. In fact giant NAB decided to completely eradicate banking accounts penalties.

We took a look at some of the transaction accounts on the market from some of the biggest banks, credit unions and building societies, and looked at how good the offers were now compared to the way they were.

Now the Australian public can have bank accounts that do not come with a monthly account upkeep fee, does not charge for run of the mill transactions, and doesn’t hit them with excessive penalties

These are also standalone bank accounts, which means they do not come tied in with any other product. You do not have to deposit money in one account in order to obtain a certain rate of interest in another account for example. If you do currently hold an account that still charges for all these things, then by moving to a low cost transaction account, or keeping fee free, you could save hundreds of dollars each year.

Below are some of the average costs you may face if you hold a fee ridden high cost transaction account:

• Overdraft penalties of around $95 and transaction fees of $30 p.a
• $60 per year in account upkeep fees- $5 per month
• Rough cost of withdrawing money at a foreign ATM $40, although with more and more ATMs appearing at bars, and clubs that figure could now be greatly increased.

Although official figures have not been published up until now, industry experts predict that the yearly savings made collectively if we all switched accounts, could be somewhere in the region of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Transaction Accounts Compared

A great deal of the newer transaction banking accounts available have ways you can avoid paying any sort of monthly fees. At the moment Commonwealth bank, and ANZ were the only two lenders who had not brought in a fee free account for clients. They have compromised slightly however by offering low cost accounts for lower income groups such as pensioners.

The ANZ Access Select bank account has a low charge of $2, which then entitles the customer to make 6 electronic transactions at no extra charge.

The access Advantage account charges $5 a month, but let’s customers make as many withdrawals as they require from ANZ machines. They also get Internet and phone banking, branch access, and cheque access.

The standard transactions accounts from CBA carry a monthly fee of $6 and $4.

There are some bank accounts that allow to you to avoid monthly fees on the condition your maintain certain behaviour, for example, you will pay no fees as long as you deposit at least $1500 into the account per month. Then there are the accounts which are totally fee free. If you have one of these banking accounts then you can enjoy the following at no extra charge:

• Deposit and withdraw at the branch
• Access to direct debits, and direct credits
• Cheque facilities
• BPAY
• EFTPOS
• Unlimited withdrawals at ATMs owned by your bank, or it’s partners.
• Internet transactions

What you will find is that even the most popular accounts are not completely fee free, and generally interest rates offered (if any) are pitifully low.

If you do have extra money and wish to save, then you will be far better considering a higher interest saving account like a term deposit account, or an Internet savings account. The biggest mistake people make, and where they end up paying the most in fees is using ATMs not belonging to their bank. When you make a withdrawal from another networks machine you will charged around $2. This doesn’t sound very much but figures suggest that around 40% of all cash machine withdrawals are made from ATMs that do not belong to our banks, and that could add up to a figure of around $640 million in just one year.

The silly thing is that it is very easy to avoid paying those $2 fees. Just by planning that little bit ahead, and only making withdrawals from your own bank’s ATM will make all the difference.

Generally whatever bank you are with, if you make a debit card withdrawal, or purchase when abroad you will be charged fees, and though reduced, many banks will still charge fees if your banking accounts goes overdrawn.

Best Transaction Accounts

There are two main providers of accounts that come with the double feature of no monthly fee as standard (in other words you do not have to make a minimum deposit to have the no fee benefit), and the ability to carry out as many day to day transactions as you wish for free, plus no penalty fees to pay.

Those accounts are:

The ING Direct Orange Everyday Bank Account

Because ING Direct does not have any ATM’s of it’s own, it will allow you to make withdrawals from other banks ATM’s with no charge, however they will still charge you for transactions on 3rd party machines, for example the type you may see in a bar or club. What they will do however is repay your $2 fee if you withdraw more than $200 at any one time.

They will also credit you with 50 cents every time you use a retailer to take out cash over the amount of $200.

There are no penalty fees charged for going overdrawn, however you will still be charged overdraft interest.

Up until recently ING were also giving customers a bonus of $20 when they had their salary paid into the account, they also gave $20 when customers first used their direct debit cards, and finally another $20 when they set up a direct debit on the account. A total of up to $60 worth of bonus payments to customers

NAB Classic Banking Account

Again no monthly account upkeep, penalty fees or transaction fees to be found here, and there is also the benefit of not having to make any sort of minimum deposit in a month for these fee waivers to be accessed.

One small charge customers face with this bank account is a small fee of between $1.80, and $5.40 per transaction if customers have a member of branch staff arrange and set up a periodic payment for them. What NAB do to combat this charge is to help customers set up these transactions for themselves using telephone or Internet banking, so they do not have to pay the fee.

Other means of automatic payment such as direct debits, or bill payments made online remain free. NAB also led from the front, by being the first bank to wipe out charges and fees when customers went overdrawn on transaction accounts. This had been a major issue for the bank, and was said to be one of the major causes of customer complaints.

What else is out there?

Transaction accounts from Bankwest

There are a couple of useful accounts from this bank. One is called the Bankwest Hero bank account. This account does require a minimum monthly deposit of at least $2000, but comes with no monthly fees. It also has a reasonable rate of interest of 4% up to a balance of $5000 and then no interest after that.

It also tries to make it easier for customers to avoid overdraft fees by having a safety net of $100. This means a customer can go up to $100 overdrawn without facing a penalty charge.

Then there is the Bankwest Zero Bank account. This account is the same as the Bankwest Hero except that it replaces the interest feature, with rebates of any ATM fees charged to customer’s when they use machines belonging to the other major banks.

Societies

Remember that you also have the option of credit unions, and building society accounts, although they do charge some fees, but counter them by offering rebates depending on the value of “membership”.

Some of the credit unions will offer fairly low rates, although they will often achieve this by asking you to buy a package of products to unlock this lower fee.

The important thing to remember is that when it comes to bank accounts you have a massive range of choice. Look at your financial personality, look how much you will deposit and withdraw each month, work out what features of a transaction account are important from you, and from there you should be able to make a more informed choice about which type of account will suit you best.

• Comparison of Top 10 Credit Card Offers

Editor's Choice: Our Top Credit Cards

Credit Card	Card Details	Interest Rate (p.a.)	Cash Advance Rate (p.a.)	Balance Transfer Rate (p.a.)	Annual fee	Interest free days (up to)
HSBC Credit Card	Editor's Choice: 0% for 6 months Balance Transfer & No Annual Fee Featuring a $0 annual fee for life, and 0% p.a. balance transfer for 6 months, the HSBC Credit Card was voted the Best Transactor Credit Card for 2010.	16.99%	20.75%	0% for 6 months	$0	55
Suncorp Clear Options Standard Visa Card	A great 12 month balance transfer offer, combined with a low annual fee and a good interest rate on purchases.	12.24%	17.99%	1.9% for 12 months	$39	0