Up Bank

I’d like to share my experience using Up Bank.

Up is a neobank based in Melbourne, Australia founded in 2018. Neobanks are Fintech (financial technology) based banks that operates exclusively online without traditional physical branch networks.

Up is a software application provided by Up Money, which is a subsidiary of Bendigo and Adelaide Bank Limited. Up Bank is a collaboration between software development company Ferocia and Bendigo and Adelaide Bank. By using the license of an established bank, Up avoids the issues with restricted banking licenses encountered by other similar Neobanks, such as avoiding impending delays of receiving an authorised deposit-taking institution (ADI) license. Financial institutions in Australia are only permitted to accept deposits from the public if they are authorised deposit-taking institutions (ADIs). The ADI’s authority is granted by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) under the Banking Act 1959 (Cth).

So what made me decide to sign up? Firstly I was interested about the whole concept of being able to sign up within 2 minutes and you would have an account all set up and ready to go.

It was a bank built by techies and not bankers. Let’s be honest, with all the negative news in the past about the Big 4 banks, I’m sure some of us get a bit iffy with where we store our money with. We would need to research If there’s any monthly fees, minimum account balance and so on.

So when I was first signed up on January 2019, I was pretty impressed. The sign up did not take more than two minutes. And i got the card within the same week. The card was bright orange which definitely stands out from the rest, also makes it easy to find in wallet. The app user interface was so easy to use and navigate. Everything was clear, and pretty straight forward.

I used this card overseas in Asia, and had no problems at all. I was a bit worried at first since I thought it would be harder to use since it was a new Neobank and that it might not be accepted overseas. But all transactions were a breeze.

The icons on the transactions made it very helpful to recognise what the transaction was for. Example: Netflix, Spotify logo would be visible next to the transaction making it instantly recognisable without having to read the description of the transaction.

So I still have my account with them after two years, i am very much happy with it and would still continue to use it.

This is just my opinion. So I have to write the below disclaimer.

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