Ubank "Enhancements" Incoming - 15/7/25 & 1/10/25

[SYD]

What have you switched to @serfty (if you don’t mind me asking)? I’m persisting with UBank for now…

Macquarie is probably the simplest now - Transaction account that earns interest, plus no foreign currency fee or OS ATM fee on the Debit Card. The Savings account is high interest (up to $1m), with no hoops and jumps. Good security with an Authenticator app.

I still have ING for the higher interest and the Debit Card is an alternative to the Mac Bank card.

I’ve keep my UBank and will start growing the Savings balance after my MacBank intro offer ran out.

 

[DejaBrew]

ING Savings Maximizer accounts

We also have opened Macquarie accounts for any excess.

Fair enough. Admittedly have both of those myself.

Macquarie is probably the simplest now - Transaction account that earns interest, plus no foreign currency fee or OS ATM fee on the Debit Card. The Savings account is high interest (up to $1m), with no hoops and jumps. Good security with an Authenticator app.

Agree. I still personally find Ubank to be the most flexible for daily banking and to their credit, they are adding new features each month (regardless of whether or not they're of personal value to me). But Macquarie is still a very good option.

 

[serfty]

Fair enough. Admittedly have both of those myself.


Agree. I still personally find Ubank to be the most flexible for daily banking and to their credit, they are adding new features each month (regardless of whether or not they're of personal value to me). But Macquarie is still a very good option.

I never found the Ubank bling of any real use to me, new or old. In fact for our purposes, the only thing these days that Ubank does better than most was automated payments. We could schedule for the same day a transfer from the savings account to the transaction account as well as a payment of those funds from the transaction account to an external recipient (e.g. Billpay). This was reliable. I have not been able to do this with ING.

Ubank was OK for us when its interest rates were competitive - NAB have enhanced™ that!

 

[DejaBrew]

....the only thing that Ubank did better than most was automated payment. <snip> This was reliable. I have not been able to do this with ING.

Yes that functionality is quite good. ING's daily Osko transfer limitations frustrate me. I don't need to move thousands around every other day, but limiting it to $1K/day was just ridiculous. I suspect they may have changed this in recent times, but it's a bit part of why I moved away from them as my daily account.

As for the "bling" functionality of Ubank, I believe they were the first bank to implement passkeys on their app. So whilst many of the new features of are no great interest to me personally, they do bring something really good to the party from time to time.

The above being said, I'm far from a "rusted on" customer.

 

[serfty]

ING's daily Osko transfer limitations frustrate me. I don't need to move thousands around every other day, but limiting it to $1K/day was just ridiculous. I suspect they may have changed this in recent times, but it's a bit part of why I moved away from them as my daily account.

For more than a year the Osko limit had been 5K per day. Still we do not use ING for general banking.

We had been using Ubank for such until mid 2025, but as indicated, NAB have enhanced™ that away!

 

[clifford]

Macquarie is probably the simplest now - Transaction account that earns interest, plus no foreign currency fee or OS ATM fee on the Debit Card. The Savings account is high interest (up to $1m), with no hoops and jumps. Good security with an Authenticator app.

I still have ING for the higher interest and the Debit Card is an alternative to the Mac Bank card.

I’ve keep my UBank and will start growing the Savings balance after my MacBank intro offer ran out.

Yeah, that's pretty much my strategy.

 

[SYD]

Today I closed my Ubank accounts. They had been dormant in December with $0 balance.

The savings account was closable via the app, but not otherwise; I had to call to close my transaction account.

Still, in the end it was rather painless - at 8:30am there was not a long wait on the 'phone. I found it cathartic to uninstall the app from my smart devices.

NAB strikes again!

A cautionary tale. We’re currently in India and I used an ATM on arrival at DEL to get some cash. Used my MacBank card and was charged an ATM fee (without warning - which apparently is common across Indian banks).

State Bank of India (SBI) is fee free for foreign cards. SYD+1 was able to get some cash using ING (but the ATM didn’t like MacBank). Later, another ATM didn’t like my MacBank card either nor my ING card, but SYD+1s ING card worked!

Tried my UBank today and it worked fine.

So I guess, while ever the basic transaction accounts are free, with no hoops and jumps, but still provide international fee free purchasing and ATM access, having a couple to choose from is useful!