ING Direct Bank are a bit like the gift that keeps on giving 😉 .

They want your business and they are willing to pay you to get it.

Back in April, they were offering a $50 ING Direct Cash Bonus to any new customer opening an Orange Everyday account.

If you didn’t take them up on their offer then, you can do so now and the qualification criteria is even lower while the ING Direct Cash Bonus is higher. Happy days!

The account is completely fee-free (except when used overseas) and all you need to do to get paid is to open it and make a one-time deposit.

You do not have to keep using it or even keep any money in it once you make the initial deposit but we strongly suggest you consider doing so.

This is for the following reasons:

• It is currently the only bank account in Australia that gives you 2% cash back on Visa PayWave purchases under $100 in Australia (as an ongoing standard feature and not a temporary promotion). Just so you know, most Australia Post outlets now support PayWave which means you can score 2% off on almost any bill that is less than $100 and which you pay at the Post Office using their PostBillPay In Person service.
• It is currently the only bank account in Australia which allows you to withdraw money at any ATM and pay no ATM operator fees. ING Direct will simply give you an instant rebate of the ATM operator fee you are charged with.
• ING Direct will give you a higher interest rate on any new or existing Savings Maximiser online savings account that you link to your Orange Everyday account. At the moment, you will be getting a 4% p.a interest rate on your savings instead of their standard (and quite ordinary we might add) rate of 2.75% p.a.

You will need to deposit of at least $1,000 in the previous month in order to access all these extra benefits but even if you don’t do that, you will never pay any monthly account keeping fees or transaction fees.

As a result of all these recent changes, we are formally endorsing the ING Direct Orange Everyday account as the BEST transaction account in Australia for domestic use and strongly recommend you consider making it your primary transaction account and switch your everyday banking to them. Later on in this post we will explain how to do that very easily and at zero cost.

But first things first. Here is what you need to do to get your hands on $75 of cold hard CASH for little to no work:

1. Go to this special link and register your details as required.
2. Open an ING Direct Orange Everyday account online using the same details. You will be prompted to do that once you register. This must be done by 10/10/2014.
3. Make a deposit of at least $1,000 into your new ING Direct Orange Everyday account by 31/10/2014.

In order to qualify for this promotion, you must be someone who never held an ING Direct Orange Everyday account before. Previous Saving Maximiser or Term deposit accounts with ING Direct are fine.

ING Direct say that the $75 will be credited into your new Orange Everyday account within 6 weeks of completing the 3 steps above. As we said earlier, you do not have to keep the $1000 in the account while waiting for your ING Direct Cash Bonus if you don’t want to use their account as your primary account.

However, we strongly recommend you seriously consider switching across all your everyday banking to ING Direct due to all the reasons we highlighted previously in this post.

If you decide to do that, ING Direct will even do all the hard work of switching all your existing direct debits and credits from your current transaction account over to their Orange Everyday. The process involves you filling out a single form and ING Direct will take care of the rest at no cost to you. The full details can be found here.

ING Direct will charge you if you make purchases online or in-store with merchants located outside Australia or withdraw money from ATMs outside Australia. Therefore, they are not the best product to use overseas. For that, we have another transaction account you should keep. That account is also completely fee-free.

If you are one of our valued subscribers, then you already know which product that is. If you’re not yet a subscriber, you can sign-up in the box below and find out instantly. Subscribing to our Saving Guides and Saving Alerts is 100% FREE and you will receive a notification straight to your email whenever we release a new Saving Alert (just like the one you are reading now) as well as our extensive range of Saving guides on everyday products and services.

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