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Student credit cards in Australia
In Australia student credit cards are vitually non existant as most credit providers do not target the student market, unlike the United States where many financial providers do target students as their requirements to give credit are not very strict, although this is not good news for Australian students there are other options available so there is hope. The most probable reason banks and other providers do not give credit to students is because there is an industry standard where a person must be on a salary of at least $20,000 per annum, most students cannot achieve or have the time to work enough hours to achive this benchmark, thus there is no point having credit products designed for students. So the students who do find the time to put in enough hours, or they are lucky enough to get a high paying job then they will be able to qualify for the usual credit cards out there but may be able to get some student features such as lower fees or no annual fee, each credit provider has there own student features so it will pay to ask when applying.
There are some banks that provide some great student options such as:
Westpac – the annual fee for the first year is waived
BankWest – offers a master card for students and you must have studied for 2 years.
Students will need to look around to see what’s on offer as most providers will not advertise their student options heavily, most likely because it is more profitable to market to working people.
If the only reason for a credit card is for the convenience to purchase online and pay for goods offline then a good option to go for would be a visa debit card. A Visa Debit card allows you to purchase items just as you would with a credit card however the funds in the visa debit account are you own savings, so there is no credit. A student may want to ask his/her parents to borrow some money to put into the visa debit account and then pay back the parents overtime.
As a student if you are finding it hard to get a hold of a credit card then you may have to ask yourself, what do I really want a credit card for? Most people want a credit card because they want to buy things they cannot afford right now and pay it off slowly later, this can become addictive and the purchasing can overpower the repayments!
Another reason that it is dangerous for Australian credit providers to give credit to students is that most will have a HECS debt to pay off once they’ve completed their course, this can range from $10,000 to $30,000 or more depending on the course and number of years studied. If a student was to get into credit card debit also they could be in a lot of trouble by the time their course is finished. So if you are a student make sure you are careful with your credit spending and think about your spending before you do it!
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