Festive shoppers left with $90bn debt hangover

January 7, 2026roymorgansocial Leave a comment

Original article by Cameron Micallef
The Australian – Page: 20 : 7-Jan-26

Australians’ credit card debt has increased every January since 2015. Canstar’s analysis of credit card data from the Reserve Bank suggests that consumers are likely to have spent about $86.8bn using credit cards since the start of November; based on trends over the last five years, an additional $28.9bn is likely to be spent using credit cards for the full month of January. Meanwhile, it is estimated that Australians now pay a combined $9.4m in credit card interest charges each day. Canstar notes that interest-free periods may be much shorter than the advertised length, depending on whether a purchase was made near the end of a card-holder’s billing cycle.

CORPORATES
CANSTAR PTY LTD, RESERVE BANK OF AUSTRALIA

Commonwealth Bank bows to ASIC pressure with $68m in fee refunds

December 24, 2025roymorgansocial Leave a comment

Original article by Angira Bharadwaj
The Australian Financial Review – Page: Online : 24-Dec-25

The Commonwealth Bank of Australia has belatedly agreed to provide a partial refund to low-income customers who were charged high fees despite being eligible for low or no-fee bank accounts. A report from the Australian Securities & Investments Commission in mid-2024 found that welfare recipients had paid $270m in "excessive" fees to the CBA since 2019. ASIC also found that Westpac, Bendigo Bank and the ANZ Bank had charged excessive fees, although they agreed to provide a refund to affected customers. CBA has now advised that it will provide $68m worth of ‘goodwill’ refunds to these customers in early February; it had already paid about $25m in refunds to Indigenous customers in response to the report.

CORPORATES
COMMONWEALTH BANK OF AUSTRALIA – ASX CBA, asic use AUSTRALIAN SECURITIES AND INVESTMENTS COMMISSION, WESTPAC BANKING CORPORATION – ASX WBC, BENDIGO BANK, AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND BANKING GROUP LIMITED – ASX ANZ

Banks abandon plan to mothball payment system by 2030

December 17, 2025roymorgansocial Leave a comment

Original article by James Eyers
The Australian Financial Review – Page: 14 : 17-Dec-25

AusPayNet’s chairman John Brogden has advised that it has postponed plans to decomission the Bulk Electronic Clearing System by mid-2030. Financial payments are processed in batches overnight via BECS; however, it was to be phased out in favour of the New Payments Platform, which processes such transactions in real-time. AusPayNet’s decision follows discussions with banks, large companies and government departments, which expressed concern that the NPP may not be ready to handle bulk payments by the former deadline.

CORPORATES
AUSPAYNET

Risk of mortgage stress drops to lowest since February 2023 following RBA interest rate cut in August to 3.6%

November 26, 2025roymorgansocial Leave a comment

Original article by Roy Morgan
Market Research Update – Page: Online : 26-Nov-25

New research from Roy Morgan shows that 25.3% of mortgage holders were ‘At Risk’ of ‘mortgage stress’ in the three months to October 2025, down 2.6% points from August. This is the lowest share of mortgage holders ‘At Risk’ of ‘mortgage stress’ since February 2023, when the share ‘At Risk’ first rose above one-in-four mortgage holders (where it has stayed ever since). The number of Australians ‘At Risk’ of mortgage stress has increased by 518,000 since May 2022, when the RBA began a cycle of interest rate increases. Meanwhile, the number of Australians considered to be ‘Extremely At Risk’ of mortgage stress is now numbered at 903,000 (17.3% of mortgage holders), which is 1% point above the long-term average over the last two decades of 16.3%. These are the latest findings from Roy Morgan’s Single Source Survey, based on in-depth interviews conducted with over 60,000 Australians each year, including over 10,000 owner-occupied mortgage-holders.