Qantas Cash gets a new name but loses points-earning BPAY perks
By David Flynn, April 3 2018
Qantas is ringing in the changes for its Qantas Cash debit card, but they're not all worth celebrating.
First up, and least consequential, Qantas Cash is getting a new name: it'll now be called Qantas Travel Money. That's probably more appropriate to the card's primary role as a prepaid travel money card which can hold a dozen foreign currencies.
From July 1 2018, however, earning Qantas Points via BPAY payments "to third parties" gets the boot, along with
- transactions made in operating a business
- bank fees and charges
- transactions made using Qantas Points, and
- government related transactions
A small upside is that the fee for an 'instant' load of money into your card will drop from 1% to 0.5% of the total (I personally find the bank transfer, which takes at most one day and attracts no surcharges, is quite good enough).
David Flynn is the Editor-in-Chief of Executive Traveller and a bit of a travel tragic with a weakness for good coffee, shopping and lychee martinis.
Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer
14 Sep 2012
Total posts 390
David thanks for the update. Honestly I tried the QF cash card once and gave it the flick pretty quickly. I can earn double MR points on my Plat Amex Charge (or Reserve) on foreign spend and cop the 3% charge all with a much better FX than the travel card. I can also use CBA Diamond Amex with no 3% again much better FX rate, or 28 Degree Mastercard no 3% again much better FX.
03 Apr 2018
Total posts 3
Could I BPAY my credit card balance using Qantas Cash and still earn Qantas points?
Virgin Australia - Velocity Rewards
06 Aug 2017
Total posts 77
Qantas Cash (and its Virgin equivalent) generally is not good value at all -- but on occasion there are (rare) "sweet spots" where the exchange rate for a particular currency on a particular day is attractive enough to make it worthwhile. The problem is that you need to go through the nitty-gritty of comparing exchange rates to find out whether it's of value or not. Generally, unless I'm going to be spending a lot of money, I don't bother; instead I use my Coles MasterCard for foreign transactions: no foreign currency fee, competitive exchange rates, and 1 Velocity point per dollar (I wait for the regular 15% promotions before transferring; otherwise 0.87 points per $).
Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer
18 Jun 2015
Total posts 105
I find that they only update rates daily at 9am aest and not at all on weekends. So if the currency drops just buy before the next day changes.
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