This week in banking news - RBA cuts, Kogan’s new credit cards and Qantas perks for small business owners

In this week’s banking recap, we look at the fallout from the Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) cut on Tuesday, the launch of Kogan’s new credit cards, changes to ME Bank’s savings accounts and Qantas perks for small business owners.

RBA’s October cut

Following a meeting on Tuesday afternoon, the RBA announced its decision to cut the cash rate by 25 basis points, bringing it to a record low of 0.75%. This is the third cut the RBA have made to the official cash rate this year, bringing the rate down to half of the 1.5% that it stood at in May. Of course, this latest cut can be seen as both a blessing and a curse for interest rates; a blessing for falling home loan interest rates and a curse for further slashed savings accounts’ interest rates.

In fact, if you’ve been thinking of purchasing a property, now might be the time to put your plans in motion, with a number of home loan lenders passing on the cut to their home loan packages. Smaller lenders including Athena Home Loans, Homestar and UBank were fairly quick off the mark to cut their home loan interest rates by the full 0.25%, whereas big banks ANZ, Commbank, NAB and Westpac opted not to pass on the full cut. 

Stay tuned for more news on how this latest RBA cut will affect home loan interest rates and savings accounts!

Aussie businesses given the opportunity to earn Qantas points!

Of course it wasn’t all about the RBA cut this week, in other news Live eftpos teamed up with Qantas Business Rewards to give Aussie businesses the opportunity to build up Qantas points every time a customer purchases something.

Your business will have to be a member of the Qantas Business Rewards program to start earning points, but you’ll be happy to hear that Live eftpos are willing to waive the one-off $89.50 joining fee if you apply online. 

So if you’re a business owner and you’ve been dreaming about jetting off to somewhere peaceful and relaxing for a week or two, why not check out this new rewards program.

eBay teams up with Coles to offer shoppers more perks

If you’re one of eBay’s 11 million monthly visitors, then you’ll be pleased to hear that you can now add grocery shopping to the list of things you can buy from the comfort of your sofa. This week eBay and Coles announced their decision to team up and give shoppers the option to purchase everything from beauty products to household items online. 

Plus if you’re a subscriber to eBay’s membership program, eBay Plus, then you’ll also be able to get a cool $49 off your first Coles on eBay shop, not to mention 5% off every other Coles grocery shop you do on eBay. And just to make things even easier, the grocery chain has announced plans to offer delivery windows for shoppers, giving customers the option to have goods delivered within a certain timeframe.

NAB launches a new mobile digitised receipt

In other new product news this week, NAB launched a new feature to its NAB Mobile App, allowing customers to easily digitise paper receipts on the go. The new feature, developed with Aussie fintech provider Slyp, aims to make keeping invoice records easier for customers.

With this new feature, the big bank hope that small business owners will be able to spend less time on admin and more time with their customers. 

Kogan introduces new rewards credit cards

On the subject of rewards news, online retailer Kogan.com introduced new rewards credit cards on Wednesday. A joint effort between Kogan and credit card giant Citi, the Kogan Money Black Card offers customers an enticing $0 annual fee and 1 reward point per $1 spent on eligible purchases. Plus, if you purchase Kogan branded items from Kogan.com you can earn twice that much, with 2 points for every $1 that you spend.

There is also a $300 Kogan gift card up for grabs if you spend $3000 on eligible purchases in the first 90 days of card approval.

Regardless of the perks, there is a 3.40% foreign exchange margin for international transactions. But if you are a loyal Kogan customer then it might be worth looking into.
 

ME Bank makes saving easier

Talking of saving, online bank ME made three simple changes to its everyday transaction and savings account bundles this week. If you’re a ME customer then you’ll no longer have to make a purchase with your everyday transaction account every week, instead you just have to make sure that you make four purchases with it throughout the month.

On top of this, you can also now earn the bonus interest rate on all your ME Online Savings Accounts, rather than just the first one you set up (granted you meet the monthly requirements). This means that if you have multiple accounts to save for multiple things then you could now be earning bonus interest on all of them! 

Finally, the serial organisers amongst will be thrilled to hear that the bank are now offering different coloured everyday transaction debit cards for each different everyday account. So you can now add super-organised colour-coded bank cards to your life admin. 

And if all this RBA cuts talk has you worried about your current savings, why not check out Mozo’s savings account comparison tool, or have a nifty at the deals below to see what else is out there.