Listen

No more smashing piggy banks

13 October 2017 ... min read

13 October 2017

Remember the days when you dropped coins in a piggy bank? And then robbed it with a butter knife when you needed a little extra money? For Australians, those days could be over with ING introducing Everyday Round Up, a digital money jar, to help save the small change.

Research by ING reveals more than half of the Australian adult population do not think twice about losing loose change. Not even when that carelessness costs them a collective AUD 38.85 million a month.

“Many people are eliminating the ‘inconvenience’ of cash by turning to contactless payment methods such as mobile pay. Not only can contactless payments ensure you’re not carrying loose change, contactless also ensures you’re not losing or throwing your money away,” said ING in Australia’s Head of Product Tim Newman.

To make saving money easier in the digital era, the ING Everyday Round Up tool was introduced in Australia recently. It hit 40,000 activations within the first fortnight.

The tool allows customers to round-up every eligible card purchase to the nearest dollar or five dollars. The difference is automatically moved to the customer’s savings account immediately after the purchase. Once the ING Everyday Round Up is set up, it can be switched on and off at any point. And if the money that has been saved is needed, you can access it instantly. No more smashing piggy banks!

But it’s not just Australians that are able to save in such a way. ING in Poland introduced the Smart Saver in 2013 allowing Poles to save small amounts by rounding-up their purchases.

Throwing money away

‘Aussies’ are quite literally throwing money away when it comes to loose change.

  • Twenty-eight percent of respondents said they hate carrying coins, with 11 percent so opposed to carrying loose change that they admitted to throwing it away. Almost all respondents (93 percent) have thrown away five cent coins, while 29 percent have thrown out 10 cent pieces.
  • The reasons for throwing away loose change include: they ‘can’t use five cents’ (40 percent), they find it ‘inconvenient’ (29 percent) and it ‘bulks up their wallet’ (27 percent).
  • With many finding cash inconvenient, almost half (49%) of Aussies said they would make payments via mobile if they could do so, with the main benefit being convenience (36%).

The research was conducted by Galaxy Research on behalf of ING in August 2017 and comprised a national online poll of over 1,000 respondents aged 18-64 years.

Related stories

Back to top