Savings and Loans VISA debit card is offered by the large credit union Savings and Loans and processed by VISA.
Savings and Loans is one of the largest credit unions in Australia. It recently merged with the Austral credit union which is also a large credit union. Credit Unions do not have shareholders and are owned by their members. This means that they can plough the profits back into improving services for their members.
The Savings and Loans VISA debit card can be used by a number of the transaction accounts that Savings and Loans offer. These include the Everyday account, the Retirement and pension account, the Cash Manager account, the Loan Offset that goes with the mortgage, the Easy account and the Line of Credit that can be set off against a property.
Many of these accounts, apart from a cash manager account, also have an overdraft facility which can give the equivalent of a credit card facility.
As the card is a VISA card then it will be accepted anywhere around the world where VISA is accepted. The card can be used to buy for a good in a foreign currency and to charge for the good in Australian dollars. It can be used in the same way as a credit card can be used but as it is linked to a transaction account it does not build up a separate credit account and so has less chance of building up high interest charges.
The card can be used for online, mail order and telephone ordering.
The card is covered by VISA’s zero liability guarantee which means that unauthorised transactions that are made on the card will not be charged to the credit card. This relies on the card holder telling Savings and Loans relatively quickly that they have had this transaction made with their card, and also not to have contributed to the unauthorised transaction by giving their card or card details to the person who made the transaction.
The Savings and Loan VISA debit card has “chip and pin” technology. This is a relatively effective anti-fraud technology that means that if a person is at a shop then they will need to enter the pin number that is stored on the card before being able to purchase the good. This is being introduced generally throughout Australia and will be on all Australian credit and debit cards by 2015.
