It’s been awhile but our absolute favourite kind of opportunity is back: getting paid cold hard cash for very little to no effort.
ME Bank is back with another of their $50 promotions.
Here is what you need to do:
- Open an Everyday transaction account online by 09/12/2025 using this link.
- Within 30 days of the account being open, make three credit (including PayPass) purchases using the linked debit Mastercard with each transaction being in an amount of $10 or more.
The purchases must done as credit purchases and not ATM withdrawals or EFTPOS (i.e contactless purchase or ‘credit’ button selected). - Collect $50 in cold hard cash within 60 days of your new transaction account being opened.
The Everyday transaction account from ME Bank has no monthly fee or transaction fees and you can also withdraw money fee-free from any ME Bank, Westpac, St.George, BankSA and Bank of Melbourne ATM Australia-wide.
It also comes with a free Mastercard debit card and you have three colours to choose from.
If you pick the pink one, ME Bank will charge you a one-off $10 fee for it but will donate one cent to the National Breast Cancer Foundation’s research projects every time you make a purchase with it. This is a nice idea in itself but just one cent? Come on, ME Bank! We would have loved to praise you for this initiative but given the fee and the scope of the ‘donation’, we can not describe it as anything more than a gimmick for PR purposes. Our verdict: FAIL!
As mentioned above, the account has no monthly account keeping fee, no electronic transaction fees and no minimum balance requirements.
However, it does have some sneaky charges which we don’t like and therefore cannot recommend this account as your primary transaction account. Amongst those sneaky charges are:
- $2.50 fee every time you make a withdrawal, deposit or even a balance enquiry at Australia Post using the Bank@Post facility. Given this bank has almost no physical branches of its own which means transacting through the Post Office becomes highly probable, we feel this is a deal breaker. As simple as that.
- $10 fee for a cheque book and $8 fee for bank cheque;
- $4 fee every time you withdraw cash at an ATM overseas; and
- 2.5% fee every time you make a cash withdrawal or purchase overseas in a currency other than Australian Dollars.
Therefore, our advice is simple: open the account, fulfill the eligibility requirements as described above, receive $50 and then close the account. The reason why we insist on closing the account is so that you will be eligible again if such a promotion takes place once more in the future. Further clarification in the next paragraph.
As it’s usually is with these kind of promotional offers, the cash bonus is offered only to new ME Bank customers which the bank defines as those people who did not already hold a transaction account with the bank on 16/09/2013.
So again, loyalty does not pay.
This is why we always hammer down the fact that it is crucial you close any bank account you opened for the sole purpose of extracting a certain benefit from that institution (be it a cash bonus or other promotional offering) once that benefit has been received.
Do NOT keep open accounts you have no use for (even if they are fee-free). You never know when another opportunity to get some more free money might come along
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Hi it’s Joe here..I subscribe & I got that Huawei Y201 you recommended and I used my ING Direct OE for the extra savings.I am still getting used to how it functions.There’s no need for any reply.I appreciate your efforts, it saves me the searching.Keep up the good work.
Thanks so much for your kind words Joe! Comments like yours is what motivates us to do better. Thanks again for taking the time to comment. We see our subscribers as part of our extended Spending Hacker family and tribe.