Our absolute favourite opportunity at Spending Hacker HQ has always been the same: cashback on everyday purchases for little to no effort.

This opportunity really gets us excited as it does not require you to collect coupons, use special codes, visits special links or do anything of that kind.

All you need to do in order to get cashback on everyday purchases is to pay for them using a debit card from one of two banking products, both of whom don’t charge any account keeping fees.

Given it’s a debit card, you are using your own money so there are no credit checks, qualification criteria or the potential to get into serious debt.

Option 1: ING Direct

You can get a 2% instant cash rebate (deposited directly into your account after transaction settlement) on purchases of $99.99 or less using Visa PayWave .

Visa PayWave is now available in all major retailers in Australia (e.g. Coles, Woolies, JB Hifi etc) as well as many restaurants, pubs and small businesses. Furthermore, it is also available in Australia Post which means you can score a 2% cashback on your everyday bills (which are in amounts of less than $100) by paying them through the PostBillPay In Person service.

In order to keep the 2% rebate every month, you’ll need to deposit at least $1,000 into your transaction or savings account with ING Direct every month. The money does not have to remain in the account after making the deposit.

ING Direct’s Orange Everyday transaction account is a fee-free transaction account with the exception of overseas purchases (2.5% of the transaction amount) and overseas ATM withdrawal ($2.50 per each withdrawal) fees.

As ING Direct does not have its own ATM network, they will also rebate any ATM operator fees provided you met the deposit requirement mentioned above.

Let’s say that again cause this is important:

If you deposit at least $1000 every month into your ING account, you will be able to use any ATM in Australia and ING Direct will instantly rebate any ATM Operator fee you are charged with.

And when we say ANY ATM, we mean that!

As long as it’s located in Australia, ING will rebate the fee. This includes ATMs at airports, casinos, farmers markets, bars and clubs which are notorious for charging very high ATM operator fees (as high as $6 a pop in some cases)

No other banking product in Australia offers that. None whatsoever!

ING Direct also does not have a branch network so all transactions that require a teller (i.e. deposits of cash and cheques) can be done at any Australia Post outlet through the Bank@Post service.

Option 2: ME Bank

Option 1 above is definitely the better one and the one we recommend you go with if you don’t already have a transaction account with ING Direct.

However, you can also score a higher percentage cashback of 5% with ME Bank but that will be for 6 months only and after that you get nothing.

However, this option is only available to new customers of ME bank who open an Everyday Transaction account with them by 30/07/2026.

As usual, loyalty does not pay! Make sure you always keep that in mind!

With the offer from ME Bank, you can get a 5% cash rebate (deposited directly into your account within 30 days of the date the transaction is debited to your account) on purchases of $99.99 or less using Mastercard PayPass for the first 6 months from account opening.

Like it’s Visa counterpart, Mastercard PayPass is now available in all major retailers in Australia (e.g. Coles, Woolies, JB Hifi etc) as well as many restaurants, pubs and small businesses. Furthermore, it is also available in Australia Post which means you can score a 5% cashback on your everyday bills (which are in amounts of less than $100) by paying them through the PostBillPay In Person service.

The ME Bank transaction account does not have a monthly account keeping fee and you can withdraw cash (in any amount) from ME Bank, Westpac, St.George, BankSA and Bank Of Melbourne ATMs without paying any ATM operator fees.

However, the ME Bank transaction account DOES have other fees, some of them quite sneaky. These fees can be avoided but you will have to be very careful how you use this account in order to do this.

Therefore, we would never recommend you use this account as your primary transaction account but rather use it for 6 months to get cashback on everyday purchases and after that make sure you close it.

If you do decide to take the ME Bank offer, here are a few points you need to be aware of:

1. You have to wait 30 days before you get your 5% rebate whereas with ING direct you get it within 2-3 days.
2. There is a $2.50 fee for ANY Bank@Post transaction (deposit or withdrawal). Given ME Bank does not a branch network, all deposits and withdrawals from this account must be done electronically ONLY in order to avoid the fee. If you need to deposit cheques, deposit them into another account you have.
   
3. There is a $10 fee for a cheque book. You can avoid this fee by simply not ordering or using any cheques from ME bank.
4. There is an $8 fee for a bank cheque. If you need a bank cheque get it from ING Direct as they charge nothing and will also mail it on your behalf to a 3rd party.
5. ME Bank charges dishonour fees. Make sure you always have enough cash in your account to cover any purchases, withdrawals and direct debits.

Provided you are aware of the points above and adjust your usage patterns of the ME Bank transaction account accordingly, you should be able to score the highest possible cashback on everyday purchases without incurring any fees.

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