FEATURES SUMMARY

• Annual fee: $0
• Purchase rate: 19.24% p.a.
• Cash Advance rate: 20.74% p.a.
• Balance Transfer rate: 5.99% p.a. first 5 months (20.74% p.a.)
• Interest-free days: Up to 55

• Extras:
  • Apply online
  • Phone/Internet banking
  • Secure Internet Shopping
  • MasterCard Applause service
  • Enhanced security chip protection

The Commonwealth Student card is a credit card with application and approval criteria created especially for students, along with a number of other features which make it the Editors Choice for the #1 student credit card on The Credit Card Guide.

The interest rate for purchases on this bank credit card is 19.24% p.a.*, and 20.74% p.a.* for cash advances. While the interest rate on this student credit card is not exactly low, there is no annual fee for the duration of your studies.

Not to mention up to 55 days interest free on purchases*, so it could be a very affordable card if you need it for those little cash emergencies that pop up every now and then and are pretty well organised with your repayments.

If you already have a credit card and/or store cards you can make things a little bit easier for yourself by transferring your balance to the Commonwealth Student credit card and pay just 5.99% p.a. in interest for the first five months*.

After that time it will increase to the cash advance rate of 19.99% p.a.. While the introductory rate is good, it doesn’t last so if a good balance transfer rate is high on your list of priorities it would be best to look elsewhere.

Commonwealth’s Student credit card is a MasterCard so it also gives you access to MasterCard’s Applause service which gets you all sorts of discounts and benefits at entertainment events.

When your time as a student is over your card will change to a Commonwealth Low Annual Fee credit card with an annual fee of just $24. If you think that a credit card from Commonwealth is not quite what you need, Commonwealth also offers a MasterCard debit card as an alternative.

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The Bendigo Blue Visa debit card is one of only a few cards with credit card capabilities on offer from Bendigo Bank. It is a very basic card with only the bare minimum in terms of features.

This debit card can be used at over 840,000 ATMs across the world, so you can use the cash in your Bendigo account without any hassle anywhere you go. With a cheap monthly fee of just $3, you can link your Bendigo Visa debit to any everyday banking account at Bendigo, including your deposit account and any mortgage or personal loan accounts you might have.

Additional cards are available free of charge if you want to share this account with a friend or family member. However, with multiple cards in use it is much harder to keep track of your debit card balance, and if you have an overdraft on your account then this could be a recipe for disaster as it will be much easier to go into debt.

Interest on an overdraft debt will accumulate much faster than it would on a normal credit card because you won’t get any interest-free days in which to pay it off. While Bendigo is overall a good bank, the Blue debit card lacks in many areas, things that most banks provide in a debit card.

This includes minimum security measures put in place to protect cardholders (only those put in place by Visa are effective on the debit card), so it doesn’t really measure up to the majority of debit cards available from other banks.

Overall, despite this card being cheaper than the majority of debit cards on the market, it seems like if you get this debit card then you are most definitely only getting what you pay for.

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Like the Bendigo Blue debit card, the Bank of Queensland Visa debit card is quite basic, but it does offer a couple of things that the Bendigo card does not.

There are seven different accounts on offer from Bank of Queensland to which you can link your Bank of Queensland Visa debit card. The monthly fee for this debit card is $1, which is a little unusual as the majority of Australian banks give debit cards out for free.

In addition to this is the monthly account fee, which varies depending on what kind of account you have and how much money you have in your account. These fees are all set out in Bank of Queensland’s personal banking guide to fees and charges which can be found on the bank’s website.

The monthly account fee can however be waived if you are a full-time student at a University, TAFE, Secondary School, if you’re under 18, if you have a Bank of Queensland home loan, or (depending on what kind of bank account you get) if you have over a certain amount of money in your account.

Unlike most other debit card providers you cannot apply for Bank of Queensland’s Visa debit card online which puts this card on the back foot in terms of convenience for its customers. Instead you have to go into a branch to set it up.

Transactions on this card at Bank of Queensland ATM’s are unlimited, but it’s not on any other banks ATM networks so you will get charged fees if you use the Visa debit card at other banks ATMs. The same goes for using Australia Post banking facilities, although the Australia Post Bank@Post service is a bonus as it increases the number of facilities there are for cardholders to carryout banking activities that they can’t do at ATM’s.

See our top credit card picks in the Editor’s Choice category