Trying to get Sony Bank Club S Platinum (2% cashback). What’s it like?

6 comments

1. I feel like there are much more productive ways to park 10M¥ but maybe that’s just me…

   But replying to your question: opening currency accounts is just a few clicks in the web interface, which is pretty bad and confusing IMO. Nothing too complicated though. Once opened, you either wire your AUD from your Australian bank or exchange from JPY directly from your JPY account.

2. > Can anyone on the Club S Platinum comment?

   Yeah, it’s nice. Simple cash in my account every month, no messing around with points systems (even though I end up doing that anyway).

   > Is it easy to open a different currency account on Sony Bank?

   Trivial, just push the button, and then once it’s open you can do a SWIFT transfer there.

   Personally I wouldn’t keep so much money in cash rather than investments, but if it’s just in AUD cash anyway then it may as well give you cashback.

3. Google says you can get up to 5.5% interest on your Australian dollars in a savings account in Aus. Sony Bank will give you 0.3%. You’d need to spend 26mil JPY on your Sony debit card just to make up for the lost interest. Maybe you spend over 2mil JPY per month, every month, I don’t know, but it seems like quite a bit.

4. Why would you not just leave it in Australia and park it in something like [uBank](https://www.ubank.com.au/banking/savings-account) if you’re not going to invest it in something more productive than cash? They’re currently paying 5.10% interest if you deposit $200 a month which will put you ahead of anything Sony Bank are offering unless you’re on a really high marginal tax rate.

   You get 0.5% cashback by default on whatever you spend on your debit card, so depositing all that cash is actually only netting you an additional 1.5%, and not even on the money you deposited, just what you spend. Doesn’t seem like a good deal compared to 5.1% compounding interest on your entire balance.

5. So I deposited 10M+ in April 2023 for 6-month cash deposit at ~6.5% post tax and made some good money on the exchange rate going down until now. In that time, I got 2% cash back on all purchases basically deposited into my account as cash so it’s legit.

   But there’s obvious risk doing this, and may not be worth it to everyone. You never know which way it will go but they are offering ~8% interest on cash deposits so some of the risk is hedged.

6. I did consider but getting 1.5 cashback on many other ways, mitsui gold, epos gold etc. combine with ana pay and get another 0.5 miles. And all can be turned into cash with few clicks. I would say, you can get the similar quite easy without need to park 10m.

   It is nice and simple if you want to keep 10m at bank. But I would not go for it as the reason to park 10m into bank.