When the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) introduced the payment card surcharging framework in 2003, it opened the floodgates for businesses to charge customers an extra fee if they used a credit or debit card to pay for goods or services. Prior to 2003, the major card networks such as Visa and Mastercard prohibited this practice.

The move by the RBA was meant to encourage consumers to seek out and use the lowest cost payment method they could find. It was a measure aimed at counteracting the increasing costs to merchants being applied by the networks, which were then passed on to customers.  

But defining how much merchants were allowed to charge proved problematic. In 2016, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) gained the power to enact a ban on excessive surcharging – defined as merchants charging customers more than it cost to accept the debit or credit card payment.

The allowed amounts charged to consumers ranged from 0.5% to 2% of the cost of the purchase for credit cards, and from 0.85% to 2% for debit cards, depending on the size of the business (smaller businesses charge higher surcharges since they pay more to use payment card networks).

It’s fair to say that these approximate caps have been routinely exceeded by businesses large and small in recent years. Airlines, in particular, have been notorious for their massive surcharges, though they often called them something else, such as a “handling fee”.

Aligning with consumer preferences

Now the RBA has come full circle and committed to banning surcharging altogether.

“The surcharging framework, introduced more than two decades ago, is no longer achieving its intended purpose of steering consumers towards making more efficient payment choices,” the RBA said in a statement.

“The increased prevalence of businesses surcharging all cards at the same rate, challenges with enforcing the current surcharging framework, and consumers using less cash have reduced the effectiveness of the surcharging regime.”

The RBA also noted that removing surcharges “aligns with the preference of most consumers for payment costs to be incorporated into advertised prices”.

Professor Angel Zhong of RMIT says the total surcharging ban, which is set to take place in October, “reflects the reality that, in a cash‑light economy, surcharging no longer works as an effective consumer choice mechanism”.

“For consumers, the key benefit is simplicity: the advertised price should increasingly be the final price, reducing confusion and frustration at checkout,” Zhong says.

But she cautions that it’s soon to celebrate the end of unfair card fees. “Payment costs do not disappear, and how much is absorbed by businesses versus passed on to consumers will depend on how the reforms are implemented in practice.”

The secret rise of debit card surcharges

In mid-March, the ACCC announced that it had launched an investigation after receiving tip-offs about high surcharges from customers of Hyatt Regency Sydney.

The regulator found that customers paying with a debit card attracted a surcharge above Hyatt’s costs of acceptance, unless the customer inserted the card into a payment terminal and selected “chq/sav”, something customers would have had no way of knowing.

It highlighted how tricky the surcharging space had become, and that surcharges were increasingly and stealthily being applied to debit card purchases.

“The ACCC expects all businesses to comply with the law and ensure their payment systems and staff are informed of different card types and apply the correct surcharge amounts for each, as it can vary between credit cards and debit cards,” ACCC deputy chair Mick Keogh said at the time.

Free and fair way to pay

When ����Vlog recently sent out a petition to ban debit card surcharges, more than 24,000 people signed.

����Vlog head of policy Morgan Campbell says card surcharges are a product of another time, and Australians will be glad to see the back of them.

“At a time when so many are doing it tough, the last thing consumers need is to be hit with a surprise surcharge at the checkout, particularly when many businesses no longer accept cash,” he says.

The forthcoming ban means card payments will be “simpler, more transparent, and most importantly, more affordable for consumers”, says Campbell.

“In a cost-of-living crisis, this fair, free way to pay is more important than ever.”

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The average Australian household was carrying somewhere around $300,000 in debt as of June 2025, most of it credit card and mortgage debt. But other forms of debt were also in the mix, including outstanding balances on buy now, pay later (BNPL) products, personal loans, and payday loans. A lot of this eventually gets paid off, but when it doesn’t, people and businesses can be forced to go bankrupt, to their long-term detriment. 

A recent report from Financial Counselling Australia (FCA) – – reveals that more and more businesses are compelling debtors to file for bankruptcy, especially in sectors where consumer protections are weak and both hardship relief and dispute resolution are hard to come by. 

In the six years since the FCA released its initial report, better data has become available, and what it shows may come as a surprise to many Australians.

ATO, strata bodies, non-bank lenders top the list

The report draws on the 6700 creditor’s petitions (forced bankruptcy applications) filed in the Federal Court for the financial years 2021–22 to 2024–25. It reveals that most of the forced bankruptcies were at the hands of a small number of creditor types.

One of those is the Australian Tax Office, the creditor that drove the most bankruptcies over the reporting period (13% of the subjects of ATO petitions). But the ATO was followed closely by strata bodies and non-bank lenders, which each forced 12% of the subjects of their creditor petitions to file for bankruptcy. Strata-related bankruptcies went up 33% nationally since 2021–22.

Since FCA’s 2019 report, the number of creditor petitions that led to bankruptcy has tripled, “with serious and potentially avoidable consequences” for the people involved, FCA says. In the financial year 2024–25, four out of ten creditor petitions resulted in forced bankruptcy, often over debts as small as $10,000.

In previous years, debt collectors and major banks drove the bulk of the bankruptcies. Both sectors have mandatory consumer protections.

“Forced bankruptcy is one of the most serious tools available to creditors and should only be used as a genuine last resort,” says FCA CEO Dr Domenique Meyrick.

“Our report shows that without stronger safeguards and modernised laws, Australians risk losing their homes and livelihoods unnecessarily over relatively modest debts.”

FCA is calling on the federal government to raise the bankruptcy threshold to $20,000 and to expand hardship protections and regulatory oversight across high-risk sectors, including strata, motor vehicle finance, small business lending, government, and education.

Put into debt by a partner

Coerced business debt – which can lead to bankruptcy – is another issue raising concerns among consumer advocates. A recent report from Monash University and the Redfern Legal Centre revealed that women are most often the victims of this form of financial abuse, belatedly discovering that their ex-partner had secretly involved them in their business affairs and made them responsible for debts they had nothing to do with incurring.

In many cases, affected women only find out about the debt after being contacted by the ATO. 

“These victim-survivors often can’t afford legal representation, and the business structures they’re trapped in are costly and complex to unravel,” says Redfern Legal Centre’s Jasmine Opdam, adding that business creditors “are not legally required to have hardship policies”. 

Monash Business School’s associate professor Vivien Chen says the research “exposes a significant policy blind spot”.

“While Australia has made progress in addressing financial abuse through consumer credit reforms, there has been little recognition of how company and tax systems can also be exploited to cause harm,” Chen says. “We need to treat coerced business debt as a serious form of economic abuse and design safeguards to reflect that reality.”

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It’s hard to get a loan from a traditional bank when you don’t have assets that show your capacity to repay. If you’re in this situation, you might be inclined to turn to a non-bank lender. There are many in Australia, including MoneyMe, whose advertising seems to be everywhere at the moment. 

MoneyMe has significantly upped its investment in marketing in recent years, and it seems to be working. Since listing on the ASX in 2019, MoneyMe has grown more than ten-fold. 

About 38% of the loans MoneyMe approved in the 2024–25 financial year were unsecured, meaning the lender was taking a chance on the borrower’s ability to manage the debt. That’s not unusual with lenders, but MoneyMe’s marketing, along with that of similar players, seems to target people willing to pay a high price for a quick loan. 

The fees and interest rates with non-bank lenders often catch borrowers by surprise. And it’s not just MoneyMe, but the entire non-bank loan sector that combines strong marketing strategies with high-cost credit to drive profits. 

Read more: Car loan providers investigated after buyers left with lemon cars and mounting debt

Extensive broker partnerships 

MoneyMe opened its doors in 2013 and is a relatively small player in the non-bank sector, but it has lent out a lot of money – $1.6 billion at end of the 2024–25 financial year, up around 28% compared to the previous financial year.  

Even without its marketing efforts, this ambitious lender has considerable reach. Most of MoneyMe’s loans are financed through its Autopay vehicle platform ($911 million in the 2024–25 financial year), and it has partnered with around 4200 dealers and loan brokers, who refer customers to this financing option, while around 3200 brokers refer customers to its personal loans options, which are offered through both MoneyMe and its subsidiary, SocietyOne. 

MoneyMe says its target market is clients who are willing to make payments over an extended period and can manage interest rate increases. But, of course, some get in trouble along the way and aren’t able to keep up with the payments. In the 2024–25 financial year, MoneyMe moved from outsourcing debt collection to doing it in-house, which improved recovery rates by 36%.

Read more: Car loan provider Money3 facing irresponsible lending claims

Loans within the hour 

To qualify for a MoneyMe loan you need to be at least 18 and have some income. Having a black mark on your credit record indicating a previous problem with paying off debt won’t automatically disqualify you. You can potentially borrow up to $70,000. The minimum you can borrow is $5000.

This is known as a low-doc loan – one that you qualify for with minimal documentation of your financial position. Mainstream lenders such as banks generally require more proof of your creditworthiness than non-bank lenders, though they also offer unsecured and low-doc loans. And the responsible lending rules – which require lenders to ensure loans are suitable for a client’s financial situation – apply to all financial licence holders.    

You can get your MoneyMe loan quickly – perhaps within the hour if you qualify – but the interest rate would likely be high if your assets are low. 

Access to your bank account and screen scraping

The way the MoneyMe loan approval process works has raised concerns among consumer rights groups that regularly hear from people in financial distress.  

As with so many online lenders these days, it’s all automatic – and in this case, potentially invasive. MoneyMe asks for your bank account login details and checks the assets and liabilities in your account using technology from a firm called Proviso (owned by the credit rating agency Illion, which is in turn owned by the Ireland-based credit rating agency Experian). 

This is also known as screen scraping, and it’s a controversial practice that financial counsellors say is outdated and unsafe. MoneyMe also gives you the option of mailing in bank statements, though it advises that the application process will take longer. 

In addition to looking at your bank account, a MoneyMe spokesperson tells ����Vlog that interest rates are based on a borrower’s Equifax credit profile, “consistent with standard industry practice, including major banks”. The weaker the profile, the higher the interest rate.

A MoneyMe spokesperson tells ����Vlog that its screen-scraping provider is a service “widely used by the industry to assist with the affordability assessment as part of responsible lending checks”.

It’s all made to be as frictionless as possible, but maybe a bit of friction isn’t a bad thing where borrowing money is concerned – especially when you don’t have a lot of it to begin with.

Read more: ASIC aims to put an end to Cigno as loan provider’s legacy lives on

High fees and interest rates

As with many other non-bank lenders that promise quick money (or ‘same day loans’), MoneyMe loans are generally expensive. For loans up to $15,000 there’s a loan establishment fee of $395, which increase to $495 for loans up to $70,000. In both cases, there’s also a $10 monthly fee. 

All of this is on top of the interest you’ll pay, which can apparently range from 5.99% (or a 6.70% comparison rate, which factors in the fees) to 24.49% (25.90% comparison rate). We’ve also seen reports of MoneyMe comparison rates of 26.99%. MoneyMe declined to answer our questions about its range of interest rates.

Paying 25% interest per year on any loan makes it very pricey. If you borrowed $5000, you’d end up paying back approximately $7517 if you paid it off in three years. If it took you five years to clear your debt, you’d be paying back almost twice as much as you borrowed, or $9405. 

If you paid off a $70,000 loan at 25% interest over five years, you’d end up paying around $123,856. These are only estimates – the exact amounts would depend on a number of variables for each customer. 

Loans at these rates for people who can’t pay off the principal can spell financial disaster. 

Collective warning from consumer advocates

MoneyMe’s lending practices have been a cause for concern among consumer rights groups.

After hearing concerns about MoneyMe’s approach to approving loans, we contacted three of Australia’s most prominent consumer advocacy organisations – Financial Counselling Australia (FCA), the Financial Rights Legal Centre (FRLC) and the Consumer Action Law Centre (Consumer Action). 

Director of casework at FRLC, Alexandra Kelly says the organisation receives 10 to 20 calls a month from MoneyMe customers who find themselves falling behind on loan repayments or have other issues, which is a lot of calls about the same lender.  

“It is difficult to say whether the volume of calls is reflective of their market share, or a sign of problems with their lending,” Kelly says. “We can say, anecdotally, that some clients have struggled to access appropriate hardship solutions on their own and have had difficulty engaging with MoneyMe.”

The lender’s automated loan approval process raises particular concerns. “They may be ‘risk rating’ consumers – whereby high interest rates and fees are charged because they know these consumers have less ability to shop around and get better priced credit. The theory is that they charge these higher fees to account for riskier credit,” Kelly says. 

She acknowledges that MoneyMe duly discloses its fees and interest rates on its website and contracts and that its practices are not as problematic as other lenders the organisation has dealt with, but figuring out what the information means in practical terms would be difficult for many customers. 

“Having monthly ongoing fees and establishment fees – or annual fees for credit cards – on top of a higher than usual interest rate is expensive credit,” Kelly says.

Compounding fees and interest means you can be paying interest on an increasingly larger amount of money as fees and interest add to the amount borrowed.  

“Few consumers would have the awareness to review their credit contract and understand the compounding nature of monthly fees and annual fees and how this can increase the effective interest rate, and then use this information to shop around to get better deals,” says Kelly. 

“For many, they may not be able to shop around.” 

The most worrisome issue for Kelly and the FRLC is MoneyMe allegedly retaining access to clients’ bank account details after the initial screen scraping. 

We have had many clients allege they were, at time of financial crisis, notified via push notifications to increase their credit

FRLC director of casework Alexandra Kelly

“Having monthly ongoing fees and establishment fees – or annual fees for credit cards – on top of a higher than usual interest rate is expensive credit,” Kelly says.

Compounding fees and interest means you can be paying interest on an increasingly larger amount of money as fees and interest add to the amount borrowed.  

“Few consumers would have the awareness to review their credit contract and understand the compounding nature of monthly fees and annual fees and how this can increase the effective interest rate, and then use this information to shop around to get better deals,” says Kelly. 

“For many, they may not be able to shop around.” 

The most worrisome issue for Kelly and the FRLC is MoneyMe allegedly retaining access to clients’ bank account details after the initial screen scraping. 

“Most consumers will not be aware they have allowed this access via their contract.It is information that could easily be misused by a lender to decline hardship, or to target advertising for increases to credit limits,” says Kelly. 

“We have had many clients allege they were, at time of financial crisis, notified via push notifications to increase their credit.” 

When asked about this, the MoneyMe spokesperson said the business “does not access bank statements for marketing purposes”.

Read more: Buy now, pay later products like Afterpay finally regulated

‘Superficial’ lending checks

Consumer Action lawyer Cat Miller has assisted many MoneyMe clients who took on loans that were out of sync with their financial circumstances. 

“We’ve had quite a few contacts from people who have had loans with MoneyMe that weren’t affordable in our view,” Miller says. Miller cites the case of a client on a disability support pension who was approved for a MoneyMe business loan, though he didn’t have a business. He used the money to buy a car but couldn’t keep up with the repayments. 

“It had a pretty significant impact on him in terms of his ability to pay his bills and afford food. The loan was not suitable for him and it caused real hardship. He didn’t have a business and the only verification they seemed to do was checking he had an ABN,” Miller says. 

The MoneyMe clients that Consumer Action hears from have generally been unable to access credit from mainstream lenders – something that’s true for clients of other non-bank lenders as well. 

“A lot of people are in financial stress, and when they take out loans that are unaffordable, it just compounds it,” says Miller. 

Miller says MoneyMe’s responsible lending checks seem superficial. 

“They should be asking clients for information about their income and expenses and then taking reasonable steps to verify it. That’s what the legal requirement is,” they say. 

“They should be looking at bank statements and payslips and asking for evidence of what their expenses are. In a lot of cases, I don’t think that’s been done. I think if they were doing more thorough checks, they wouldn’t be able to approve as many loans.”

Responding to these concerns, the MoneyMe spokesperson says the business has “a comprehensive responsible lending framework in place and services a customer segment with strong credit profiles. Each application is reviewed on its individual merits, subject to an affordability assessment.”

Read more: Harvey Norman and Latitude Finance’s appeal shut down in court

Non-bank lenders on notice 

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has its eye on the non-bank lending sector. 

A report in September this year revealed that ASIC had talked to several non-bank lenders about their hardship practices, including La Trobe Financial, Bluestone Mortgages, Firstmac, Plenti and Volkswagen Financial Services. (ASIC has collected data on MoneyMe but didn’t engage with the business.)

In May this year, ASIC filed legal action against the non-bank home loan manager Resimac for its poor response to hardship cases. Following ASIC’s action, non-bank lenders are set to adopt a new code of conduct for financial hardship practices.

The MoneyMe spokesperson says customers experiencing financial hardship can access support through phone, email, and live chat and that the lender’s hardship approval rates are above the industry average.

Financial Counselling Australia senior advocate Deb Shroot says the experiences of financial counsellors who hear from MoneyMe clients paint a different picture. 

“The biggest concern is that MoneyMe is not very flexible with the hardship provisions they offer to clients having trouble paying their debts. Instead, they have a cookie-cutter approach. They don’t have a dedicated hardship phone line for financial counsellors or clients to call, and it can take a really long time for people to get a response to a request for a hardship plan. MoneyMe’s approach is inadequate and needs addressing,” Shroot says. 

Along with other advocates, Shroot is concerned about the entire sector. 

“These non-bank loans are a very expensive form of credit, and a lot of the non-bank lenders charge hefty fees and interest rates,” she says. 

“The loans are quick and easy, and financial counsellors urge people to be very careful of using them because it’s easy to fall into a debt trap that is very hard to get out of.”

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Gift cards are tricky financial instruments that can come with unwelcome surprises, such as the business in question going bust or the card expiring before you can use it. They’re purchased with cash but generally can’t be exchanged for cash. It’s funny money with little of the flexibility of actual money. 

In the 2010s, ����Vlog put a lot of work into making gift cards fairer for consumers, resulting in some much-needed regulation.

Since November 2019, gift cards have had to remain valid for at least three years with the expiry data clearly shown, and any conditions or restrictions on the use of the gift card must be clearly communicated. (There are some exceptions to these rules when it comes to reloadable gift cards and one-off promotional vouchers.) 

Businesses are also not allowed to charge you unfair fees, such as activation, account keeping or inactivity fees. Having to make these rules illustrates the kind of tricks that gift card issuers had gotten up to.

Unexpected fees plus interest 

But while regulation has improved, grey areas remain, as ����Vlog member Helen recently found out. In August she purchased a $475 Woolworths e-Gift Card with her Commonwealth Bank credit card and was surprised when a cash advance fee of $14.25 was applied. Obtaining a cash advance via your credit card is never a good idea and is usually only done when others options have been exhausted. 

“I contacted CommBank and its response was that ‘a cash advance is when you use your credit card to access cash rather than goods and services’. Presumably CommBank interprets the purchase of a gift card as accessing cash and hence they can charge you in this fashion,” Helen says. 

The fee was bad, but the interest rate was worse, as is often the case with credit card cash advances. For Helen’s CommBank card, it was 21.99%, calculated daily and charged monthly, with no interest-free period. In other words, interest on what was now treated as a $475 loan began immediately. 

After a month, the interest and fees payable on that gift card purchase would have been about $23. After a year it would be about $95. Paying off the $475 debt, of course, would put a stop to the interest. 

What counts as a CommBank cash advance? 

CommBank says the following scenarios count as credit card cash advances: 

• Withdrawing money from an ATM with a credit card
• Transferring money from a credit card to another account
• Buying money transfers or traveller’s cheques with a credit card
• Using a credit card for gambling or other cash equivalent transactions (such as lottery tickets, money transfers or travellers cheques)

Using a credit card to buy a gift card is notably absent from the list, so we contacted CommBank in pursuit of an explanation. 

We got one, but it took us down into the weeds of what’s known as Merchant Category Codes. These are four-digit identifiers assigned to merchants by credit card schemes such as Mastercard and Visa which determine whether a transaction is considered a cash equivalent. 

The CommBank spokesperson tells us that purchasing a ‘stored value’ card (including gift cards) with a CommBank credit card is treated as a cash advance by the bank when it’s purchased through a third-party payment platform, due to the category code kicking in.

Notably, it wouldn’t be a cash advance if purchased directly from Woolworths, either online or in-store.  

“Cash or cash equivalent transactions can be considered a cash advance based on how the merchant categorises the transaction,” the spokesperson says. 

This ambiguous statement would have come as news to Helen.  

She acknowledges that she paid for the Woolworths gift card with her CommBank credit card through PayPal, but she had done so several times previously. 

“In January and July this year, I purchased Woolworths gift cards in exactly the same way and I was not charged a cash advance fee. I attempted to ascertain whether this was a new policy but I did not get a clear answer from Commbank,” Helen says. 

Cash advance policies of other banks

All the major banks include the same cash advance scenarios outlined by CommBank on their websites, but none – including CommBank – list the use of third-party payment platforms. Only one major bank, ANZ, says gift cards purchased with a credit card will be treated as a cash advance in addition to the other scenarios. 

ANZ Bank also says that paying a bill with your credit card in person at a bank or post office will be treated as a cash advance, which may come as a surprise to some customers.  

While this hiccup in Helen’s finances is not a life-changer, it means she’ll be changing the way she pays for gift cards. And she’s still not clear on why she accessed a cash advance without meaning to. 

“I would imagine that many seniors purchase Woolworths gift cards as they are able to access a 5% discount. If it’s treated as a cash advance, then the discount is nearly wiped out. Needless to say, I am not very happy with the situation and the response from Commbank has been unsatisfactory to date.” 

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An offer of 60 months of interest-free credit can be especially compelling to people who don’t have the cash on hand to buy something they need. It has the whiff of free money. But in the case of the Latitude Finance and Harvey Norman partnership, important details were left out of the advertising campaign.

It turned out that the interest-free offer involved signing up for a Latitude credit card – one that came with an initial cost as well as ongoing monthly fees. The advertisements neglected to mention this. They also didn’t explain that a single late payment would result in the loan going from interest-free to some of the highest interest rates on the market.

Handing out credit cards at point of sale without robust responsible lending checks is a practice that earned the lender and retailer a 2020 ����Vlog Shonky. As part of that investigation, we profiled cases of Harvey Norman flogging Latitude credit cards at the checkout counter and encouraging customers to buy items on finance they didn’t need or ask for – we even found cases where salespeople suggested a $12,000 limit when the product being sold cost a fraction of that sum.

By way of example, we also pointed out that making only the minimum repayments on a $5000 Harvey Norman Latitude Mastercard Go at 22.74% would mean paying $17,909 over the 29 years and eight months it would take to pay off the loan ($12,909 in interest).

Grounds for appeal ‘barely arguable’

In 2022, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) launched a court case against Latitude Finance and Harvey Norman for “pursuing a national advertising campaign which failed to adequately disclose the true scope and cost of the promoted payment method”.

In October last year, the court ruled that the lender and retailer had broken the law, but Latitude Finance and Harvey Norman appealed the decision. In August this year the Full Federal Court knocked back the appeal and suggested it should have never been mounted.

The court ruled that the grounds of appeal “lack merit and are barely arguable” and that it was “regrettable that the final determination of remedies in this proceeding has been delayed by the unmeritorious applications for leave to appeal”.

The legal team for Latitude Finance and Harvey Norman tried to convince the court that people seeing the advertisements would know there must be a catch and therefore they weren’t misleading. This didn’t fly with the court.

“Ordinary and reasonable consumers would have assumed that the offer made in the advertisements was stated accurately, particularly in light of Australia’s strong consumer protection laws,” the court stated.

“This is an important win for consumers. ASIC took this case because we believed many consumers were unaware of the financial arrangements they were entering into, and they deserved to be fully informed,” says ASIC deputy chair Sarah Court, adding that the decision “reinforces the importance of truthful advertising”.

ASIC will be seeking court costs and financial penalties for Latitude Finance and Harvey Norman as well as an injunction against further misleading ads.

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The fraudster moved fast. In a little over an hour, they accessed $2000 in cash from an ATM, paid for a meal at McDonalds at The Strand in Sydney, then went on a shopping spree at the nearby Apple and JB HiFi stores, charging a total of around $17,000 to the credit card account of Sydney pensioner Brian and his wife. 

Shortly after the electronics binge, National Australia Bank (NAB) caught on to the suspicious activity and blocked the card. The fraudster called the bank posing as the legitimate cardholder and tried to have the block removed, but the bank wasn’t buying it. 

Then, posing as an NAB employee, they called the cardholder, Brian, for the same purpose. This is when Brian first realised that his credit card account had been breached. The jig was up for the fraudster, but they had gotten away with plenty. 

Bank blames the victims

It’s an open and shut case as far as NAB is concerned – they have refused to reimburse the roughly $19,000 that was charged to Brian and his wife’s joint credit card account. But to Brian, the bank’s reasoning sinks to the level of absurdity. 

In correspondence with Brian, the bank claims that because the criminal had the PIN information, the ‘balance of probability’ indicates that the couple must have failed to protect it. NAB maintains it made no errors that contributed to the loss and couldn’t have acted to prevent it. Therefore the bank absolves itself entirely, despite the fact that banks have historically not been in a position to prevent untold numbers of banking scams.  

Brian and his wife are sure their credit cards were always in their possession, and neither had shared their PIN with anyone. 

As it stands, they’re faced with the galling prospect of paying off a steep credit card bill run up by a criminal. 

It may have been skimming

Brian theorises that his credit card may have been skimmed when he used it at an NAB ATM. With a physical skimming incident, devices are installed on ATMs or other point-of-sale terminals by criminals. The device captures the card number and other data as well as the PIN. The criminals then create fake credit cards and charge people’s accounts. 

But old-school physical skimming has evolved into digital skimming, where criminals infect websites and other platforms that accept credit card payments with malicious code that steals the details. The malware can go unnoticed for a long time. Whether it was a physical or digital skimming incident in Brian’s case, or a skimming incident at all, remains unknown. 

What Brian does know is that, in his view, his 55 years of loyalty to NAB has been rewarded with callous indifference. In a ‘goodwill gesture’, the bank offered the couple $1000 to make the matter go away, a move Brian describes as “pathetic”. 

“They’ve implied that because we’re old or something, we may have somehow attached our PIN numbers to our credit cards. It’s as if they’ve never heard of skimming,” Brian says. 

Brian is also sure of another detail: neither his or wife’s credit card had ever gone missing.

NAB says protect your PIN

Brian believes he has presented a case to NAB that proves that he and his wife did not violate the bank’s requirement that cardholders not reveal their PIN to anyone. 

NAB retail executive Tony Story tells ����Vlog the bank “is committed to protecting our customers from fraud” but suggests a PIN must have been disclosed to a fraudster in this case. 

“While we cannot comment on individual cases for privacy reasons, we remind all customers of the importance of keeping their PINs secure. Sharing or inadvertently disclosing your PIN – including through phishing scams – can compromise your account and may breach the card protection terms and conditions.”

Story says customers who are aware that they’ve revealed their PIN should contact the bank.

“If you believe you’ve been scammed or your PIN has been exposed, please contact NAB immediately. We will investigate and support you through the process.”

In the first four months of 2025, Australians reported around $119 million in losses to the ACCC’s Scamwatch service. Most of the money was stolen through phishing scams, where scammers impersonate government agencies, financial institutions and other businesses. Total scam losses in 2024 reported to the ACCC and other agencies was around $2 billion. 

Pinning their hopes on AFCA

Brian and his wife have escalated the case to the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA), but Brian is worried that he’s just one of hundreds of thousands looking for a fair outcome. (AFCA received 100,745 complaints in 2024–25.) 

“It seems like everyone’s overwhelmed, including the banks. And they just seem to fob people off to AFCA.” 

Brian acknowledges that NAB has been generally reasonable to deal with throughout the complaint process, though one representative did imply that because the couple was of a certain generation, they were less likely to keep their credit card details safe. Brian and his wife bristled at the suggestion.  

The ongoing point of contention is that the bank refuses to reimburse their stolen funds, which is a significant financial blow for the couple. Then there’s the problem of not being believed when insisting that they know how to keep their credit card details secure.

In Brian’s view, he and his wife have been summarily dismissed. “The whole process has been stressful because they’re basically saying I’m a liar and a fraudster and I’m not.” 

In a letter outlining the case for the local police department, Brian and his wife got right to the point, saying NAB’s “failure to take responsibility for their grossly inadequate systems and provide answers to our legitimate questions is tantamount to supporting the criminal perpetrators”.  

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Having a business repeatedly charge your credit card without your consent can feel personal. It gets worse when the credit card issuer apparently can’t do anything about it. 

In these cases, banks often say you need to contact the merchant yourself to stop the charges, but what happens when that doesn’t work? 

Under Australia’s Banking Code of Practice, banks are required to cancel ongoing direct debits at the customer’s request. But recurring charges to credit cards are another matter. 

The battle to regain control of your credit card may involve dealing with upbeat but unhelpful bots on your bank’s website, having to explain the situation repeatedly to both bots and humans, and being subjected to an exhausting run-around by the business in question. 

Longtime ����Vlog member Andrea Osborne recently underwent all of the above. Along the way she became over-acquainted with an ANZ Bank virtual assistant named Lottie as she tried to prevent the UK-based antivirus software company TotalAV from continuing to charge her credit card. 

It started with a modest $20, which Andrea had authorised, but two months later another $40 transaction came out of the blue.  

“I phoned the company and I was told that my subscription had been an introductory offer, which only lasted for 60 days, and that the funds deducted were to take it up to a full year’s subscription,” Andrea says. 

It was the first she’d heard of any introductory offer. 

Then, 12 months after she first signed up, there was another $102 TotalAV charge that Andrea had not expected. To her knowledge, she had never given the company permission to take money out of her account without asking. The business then processed two more $102 charges over the next 12 months. 

“I complained to Total AV and was told that they had not only renewed my subscription but also upgraded my security – once again, without my knowledge or consent. I contacted ANZ and tried to get them to reverse this charge but I was told that unless I could prove that I had cancelled my subscription, there was nothing they could do.”

Twelve months later, TotalAV helped itself to another $184. The threefold increase over three years was extreme, but this time the business was ready to wheel and deal. They dropped the offer down to $29 and Andrea accepted. 

Subscription trap springs shut 

Then the problems started with her laptop. 

“My computer technician found that Total AV’s internet security was using so much memory that it prevented the normal functionality of my computer. He had to uninstall it to fix the problem.”

It was time to pull the plug. 

But the company seemed desperate not to let Andrea go. TotalAV customer service threw obstacles in her way, such as making her go through a verification process to make sure it was really Andrea before they could start the cancellation process. It seems TotalAV had concerns about what must be a rare type of fraud – people maliciously cancelling other people’s antivirus accounts without their permission. 

A customer service representative who may or may not have been a bot seemed particularly distraught, telling Andrea: “I’m really surprised to hear you are looking to cancel your service with us … I would love to be able to get a resolution together for you.”

For Andrea, the resolution was to get TotalAV to stop charging her credit card. 

“I tried to cancel my subscription. This proved virtually impossible. The help and support option only allowed me to try to cancel. But then when I tried to proceed, they just kept offering more and more discounts.”

Card cancellation not enough 

ANZ told Andrea that the only way the bank could prevent further withdrawals was to cancel her credit card and issue a new one. She was also told the bank couldn’t execute a chargeback since she had actually received the unwanted TotalAV subscription. 

A new credit card was issued in March 2025, but in April TotalAV charged her new card twice, totalling around $63. 

ANZ explained that Visa had apparently automatically updated TotalAV with her new credit card details, a standard procedure by the credit card giant for participating businesses. The bank suggested she cancel her credit card again. But Andrea had had enough. 

“I decided to divorce ANZ from my life by closing my account, but I am so disgusted that when my money is under their supervision, they decide who to give it to without my consent,” says Andrea. “Whatever happened to my money being under my control? And how has my decision about who it goes to been obliterated?”

We contacted TotalAV for comment on the channels we could find but there was no response.

ANZ says ‘contact the merchant’

An ANZ spokesperson tells ����Vlog that the first step for customers is to contact the merchant to stop recurring charges, something that Andrea had done several times.  

“If they are unsuccessful in resolving the issue, customers can contact our disputes team to assess their eligibility for a chargeback and ensure all available avenues for resolution are considered.” 

ANZ also suggested that customers could opt out of the Visa Account Updater (VAU) service, which automatically shares updated card details. The opt-out prevents merchants from receiving new card information after a card is replaced. Andrea knew nothing about this. 

CBA keeps processing charges 

In another case, frustrated Commonwealth Bank customers Ross Pollock and his wife Peggy recently contacted ����Vlog to share their own ordeal trying to stop recurring credit card payments.

Peggy needed to close her 91-year-old father’s credit card account. Her power of attorney was on record with the bank, but there was a wrinkle. Microsoft and Avast charges were still being processed every year, though Peggy had tried to stop both of them. 

“She was told that unless she could shut those two debits down at her end, Commonwealth Bank will continue to pay them,” Ross says. 

The couple finally managed to get Microsoft to discontinue the charges but were still dealing with Avast at the time of publication. 

A Commonwealth Bank spokesperson directed us to guidance on the bank’s website on how to stop recurring payments on credit cards. The page instructs customers to contact the merchant and warns that “any contractual arrangement between you and the merchant may remain in place”. 

The bank also instructs customers to contact them to request a stop on a recurring charge. 

The Pollocks took both of these steps to no avail. For Ross, a bank’s refusal to stop credit card charges at the customer’s request is a matter of misplaced loyalty. In his view, principles of contract law come into play. 

“The bank has entered into a contract with the account holder and not any third-party supplier such as Microsoft or Avast. The account holder is the one who has a contract with the supplier. It shouldn’t be up to the bank to continue to honour a payment to the supplier after the account holder has requested that it be stopped.” 

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The $20 million penalty recently handed down by the Federal Court against Captain Cook College comes at the tail end of the outsized VET FEE-HELP loan scandal. 

VET FEE-HELP (VFH) was launched by the federal government in 2009 to help disadvantaged people earn diplomas in higher level vocational education and training (aka VET). It was later replaced by VET Student Loans in 2017. Courses on offer included diplomas in management, business, early childhood education, salon management and more. 

Sadly, the initiative was met with a level of callousness and greed that could test one’s faith in human nature. Captain Cook College is just one of the many online educators caught bilking the federal government, and making life tougher for people who were already struggling. 

Like the other offenders, the business received tens of millions of taxpayer dollars through the VFH program. As a condition for the funding, Captain Cook College was required to have safeguards built into its enrolment and withdrawal processes to ensure students were engaging with the courses and not taking on debt and ending up empty-handed.

In September 2015, the business deliberately dispensed with these safeguards and continued to charge thousands of people who had signed up but never taken part. 

About 5500 of them racked up debts totalling over $60 million. Nearly all of them never completed any part of an online course, and around 86% of them never even logged in. For years, the business menaced these would-be students with threats about owing thousands to the government. 

Their debts, along with other victims of the VFH loan fiasco, eventually had to be waived by the government. 

“Captain Cook College’s conduct not only cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars, but it also caused distress to the thousands of consumers enrolled in their courses who, for many years, were told they had significant debts to the government,” says Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) Chair, Gina Cass-Gottlieb. 

The court also imposed penalties of $10 million on Captain Cook College’s parent company, Site Group International Limited (Site), and $400,000 on Blake Wills (Site’s former COO). 

Both knew about and were involved in the unconscionable conduct. But there seems to have been little contrition – the business unsuccessfully appealed its initial legal loss in July 2021 all the way to the High Court. It entered into voluntary administration in March this year.

No shortage of dodgy education and training businesses 

The lure of government funding set loose a feeding frenzy among unscrupulous operators. Along with Captain Cook College, the ACCC has brought successful legal action against Unique International College, the Empower Institute, the Australian Institute of Professional Education, Acquire Learning, and the Phoenix Institute of Australia.

One common theme is that these businesses targeted remote Indigenous communities and low socio-economic areas in full knowledge that many who signed up would never complete a course. Charging them anyway was part of the grand plan. Almost all these operations went out of business as a result of legal action.  

It all started to come undone in May 2017 when the ACCC won a $4.5 million against Acquire Learning and Careers for false and misleading conduct in the way it signed up disadvantaged and vulnerable students, which included commissions and bonuses for the telemarketers who reeled in the most. It was the second-largest consumer protection penalty to date, but this was just the beginning. 

The Justice in the case commented that the tactics “resembled those of an unscrupulous fly-by-night operation” rather than a market-leading provider of student recruitment services, which is how the business described itself. 

Preying on disadvantaged communities

A new record was set when the Empower Institute got nailed with a $26.5 million penalty in September 2019 for unconscionably targeting remote Indigenous communities and low socio-economic areas, making various false or misleading claims, and often throwing in a free Google Chromebook as an inducement.

Just about anybody could have the job of convincing people to sign up to courses, which cost up to $15,000. Door-knocking was a standard procedure.

But it didn’t end well for the business. In addition to the penalty, the Empower Institute was ordered to reimburse the federal government more than $56 million. 

Then ACCC chair Rod Sims put it plainly: “Empower misled many vulnerable and disadvantaged consumers who had poor English language literacy or numeracy skills, and others who could not even use a computer and did not have access to the internet.” He called the tactics “appalling”. The court went with the phrase “callous indifference”. 

‘Difficult to imagine worse conduct’ 

Next came Unique International College, which was hit with a $4.1 million penalty in October 2019.  Free laptops (paid for by your tax dollars) were on offer if you came aboard, yet many among Unique’s target demographic didn’t have an internet connection. Door-to-door sales was also part of the marketing strategy. 

Referring to one affected individual, the judge said “This was the exploitation of an obviously very vulnerable person for financial gain. It is difficult to imagine unconscionable conduct which could be worse.”

$153 million for systematic predation 

The Australian Institute of Professional Education (AIPE) took things to the next level in December 2021. Having received over $210 million from the Commonwealth for approximately 16,000 enrolments, the Federal Court applied a $153 million penalty for its unconscionable tactics, which included doling out free laptops and telling people with limited reading and writing skills that the courses were also free, which they weren’t. The victims were each left with debts of around $20,000.   

At the time the case set yet another record for the highest penalty to date imposed under the Australian Consumer Law. The presiding Justice said: “Substantial penalties are called for when a commercial enterprise systematically predates on both a government education support scheme designed to help disadvantaged members of the Australian community, and consequently, upon those consumers.” 

But the record penalty became a paper tiger. Because AIPE had been liquidated, it was never paid. 

Prior to this legal outcome, AIPE had already been ordered to repay approximately $142 million to the Commonwealth in compensation for funding it wasn’t entitled to. It’s not clear how much of this was ever paid during the liquidation process.

Phoenix Institute penalty sets another new record 

In the case of the Phoenix Institute and its marketing arm Community Training Initiatives, the ACCC’s legal action resulted in a $438 million penalty, shattering the previous record. Once again, free laptops were involved, as well as the false promise that the courses were free. In fact, students affected by the misconduct incurred debts of around $37,000 each. In total, debts incurred under the VFH FEE-HELP scheme arranged by the Phoenix Institute exceeded $350 million. 

Phoenix received around $106 million in Commonwealth funding, yet only nine of Phoenix’s approximately 11,000 students ever finished a course. It claimed another $250 million from the government on top of this, but this was stopped short as legal action commenced and Phoenix went into liquidation. 

“This case involved cynical and calculated systemic unconscionable conduct towards disadvantaged individuals, on an industrial scale,” ACCC Chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb said at the time. The Justice in the case called the numerous contraventions of consumer law “morally abhorrent”. 

Across the board, the magnitude of the wrongdoing was breathtaking. In July 2023, the ACCC announced that around $3.4 billion in VFH debt had been re-credited to over 185,000 students since 2016. 

The majority of that came through the VFH Student Redress Measures, which came into effect in January 2019 and ended on 31 December 2023. Invalid debt can still be waived, but it will likely take more effort and persistence than when this program was running. 

What to do if you believe you still have invalid debt 

As of 1 January 2024, a new multi-step process has been in place for people who still have debt they believe should be waived. The onus is on affected people to take the initiative and follow through, but it’s a process worth pursuing to clear your record and make sure any illegitimate debts don’t continue to haunt you. 

If you are experiencing financial hardship, you can call the on 1800 007 007 for free, confidential and independent information and advice. If you or anyone you know needs support, contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or at , or Beyond Blue on 1300 224 636 or at .

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Having a loan quickly approved so you can buy a used car can seem like a good thing, until the vehicle stops working and you have to keep making payments. 

It’s a widespread problem that’s getting worse, especially for people who are struggling financially. In March this year, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) announced it was launching a review into the used car finance sector, with a focus on regional and remote locations, including First Nations communities.

In particular, ASIC will scrutinise adherence to responsible lending laws by seven lenders as well as look at how they handle defaults, disputes and hardship cases. 

The action follows a number of cases of used car lenders breaching responsible lending laws, including the recent case of a woman named Emma. 

Money was tight in Emma’s world, but buying a new used car was necessary to get to her job which started at 3.45am. Her previous vehicle had become chronically unreliable; public transportation wasn’t an option; and, at around $60 a pop, an Uber was out of the question. 

She paid $16,000 for what looked like a solid automobile at a used car dealer in a Melbourne suburb. This was well beyond her means, but a financial services firm called Money3 agreed to give her a loan. 

It soon became clear that Emma’s new car had serious problems. “I drove it to work the next day and home, and it was fine. And then I drove to work the next day and it overheated,” Emma tells ����Vlog. “I called the car dealer and said I need to bring the car back. And they said, no, you have to deal with National Warranty.” 

This is a separate business that provides extended warranties for cars, tacked on as part of Emma’s purchase. She was told by National Warranty to take the ailing vehicle to one of their approved mechanics, where she paid for several small repairs to the radiator. 

The car continued to overheat, and Emma was seriously distressed. 

“I was crying and sobbing because now I’m paying for the car, I’m paying for insurance and I’m paying to try and get the car fixed. So I’ve run out of funds.” 

At this point Emma’s then-boyfriend came to the rescue and paid his mechanic $2200 to install a new radiator and cooling system. The car continued to overheat. 

Another mechanic Emma consulted told her the car’s head gasket had to be replaced. A new one would cost $3000, but the mechanic said what she really needed was a reconditioned engine for $6000. She didn’t have the money. Deprived of a working vehicle, Emma lost her job. 

She could no longer make her car loan payments, and she started getting emails threatening repossession. 

“I was just trying to manage my mental health because everything was crashing down on top of me,” Emma says. 

Consumer Action Law Centre intervenes

Emma got in touch with the Consumer Action Law Centre (Consumer Action), a Melbourne-based advocacy organisation, where counsellors walked her through her options for resolving the matter. These started with a letter of demand to the car dealer to take the faulty vehicle back. This was met by a howling silence. “Not a phone call, not an email, not anything,” Emma says.

The expert advice and support was a godsend, but acting on her own wasn’t getting her anywhere. 

Consumer Action lawyer Taylah Alanis decided to officially take on the case, which ended up making all the difference. The focus shifted to whether Money3 had properly checked Emma’s suitability for the car loan, a requirement for businesses that hold a financial services license. Alanis did her own evaluation of Emma’s financial circumstances, and it was clear that Money3’s checks were superficial. 

“It looked like a bit of a tick-the-box exercise. They collected documents, but there was no follow-up to verify or ask additional questions or identify any red flags,” Alanis says.  

This is typical of many of the irresponsible lending cases Consumer Action has dealt with. 

“We often see that lenders will obtain all the documents required, such as bank statements and any other outstanding loans, as well as the borrower’s income,” Alanis says. “But there can be very obvious red flags in these statements that show that the prospective client is living paycheck to paycheck. The documents clearly show that the loans are unsuitable, but lenders are just not verifying income and expenses.” 

����Vlog contacted Money3 for comment but didn’t receive a reply. 

ASIC case against Money3

Emma’s case is not an isolated one. Money3 – which is based in Victoria but offers loans across Australia – is currently involved in legal proceedings brought by ASIC, which has charged the business with failing to undergo thorough lending checks in several instances.  

The regulator has alleged that Money3 failed to properly assess whether a number of borrowers – many of them on low incomes or receiving Centrelink payments – could repay the loans they took out for used vehicles, all for the same amount. Many were indigenous Australians. 

“The consumer loans we are concerned with showed the purchase price of $8000 for a second-hand vehicle with additional fees and warranty adding another $3,000,” ASIC deputy chair Sarah Court said when the case was announced in 2023. 

“An $11,000 loan is a substantial sum for a consumer on a low income to repay without having been properly assessed as to whether they could afford to repay it. In some cases the vehicle broke down, leaving the consumer with an unusable car and a loan that they couldn’t afford, compounding the detriment.” 

Closing submissions for the case were heard in March this year, with a judgment expected soon. 

In May last year, former ����Vlog CEO Alan Kirkland – now an ASIC commissioner – gave a speech focusing on lemon cars and used car financing at the annual Consumer Rights Forum. 

Kirkland told the story of a single parent who secured financing on a car with few responsible lending checks. The car soon ground to a halt. The case pointed to a larger story about “far too many consumers who are being sold poor quality vehicles on dodgy credit arrangements – who end up with no car, no way to get around, and ongoing debts”, Kirkland said.

Hotbed of consumer abuse 

Consumer Action’s Taylah Alanis says the used car dealership sector is a hotbed of consumer abuse.

“We are seeing a lot of egregious behavior by traders, so there’s a lot of bad faith around car sales.” 

But exerting your rights under consumer law after buying a lemon car isn’t easy. You generally have to take the case to a state tribunal and present expert reports attesting to the condition of the vehicle. This costs money. And it can take up to two years to even get an initial hearing. Used car dealers appear to be aware of these obstacles. 

“These traders aren’t interested in informal negotiations and providing a refund,” Alanis says. 

Meanwhile, people with undriveable vehicles are stuck with the ongoing car payments, including insurance and registration. 

In Emma’s case, it took around five months for Consumer Acton to convince Money3 to cancel her loan. In the end, her vehicle was carted away via tow truck, and she was reimbursed for loan repayments she’d already made, totalling  around $4700. She also received additional compensation for non-financial loss.   

ButMoney3 made no apologies. “The reason they settle is to avoid acknowledging any wrongdoing, to avoid admitting that there has been any breach of responsible lending laws,” Alanis says. 

ASIC says it will publish high-level findings from its review in the second half of this year, followed by a more detailed report. 

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To date, a number of Cigno loan models have been banned after the regulator stepped in, including a product that charged the equivalent of 800% annual interest in fees.

At a Senate estimates hearing in November, ASIC deputy chair Sarah Court described how Cigno has continually manoeuvred to stay a step ahead of the regulator. 

“There have effectively been a number of business models. That’s the issue. Each of these business models has provided loans to consumers in a particular way that [perhaps speaking broadly] has been designed in a way … to use loopholes to avoid having to comply with the important consumer credit protections.” 

“The challenge for ASIC is … there are vulnerable consumers significantly impacted. We go to court. The court makes the finding ‘This is a breach of the law’. The company then re-manifests. It says ‘Oh, here’s another business model’. And again [it’s] very slightly designed to be outside of the provisions of the law,” Court says. “We are resolute in our determination to put an end to these business models.” 

Cigno’s long history of dodgy lending

Cigno Australia has been around for many years offering consumer loans. As an unlicensed and unregulated lender, Cigno couldn’t charge interest, but the company has more than made up for that with high fees. 

The company is headquartered on the Gold Coast in Queensland and is run by former Super Rugby player Mark Swanepoel. 

Cigno Australia has been in ASIC’s sights for a number of years, and has been the focus of several court cases brought by the regulator, one of which Cigno won. But in May 2024, in the most recent case to go through the courts, the Federal Court ruled that Cigno had engaged in credit activity without a licence and charged fees that exceeded the cap on payday loans.

“We took this action because we were concerned that the Cigno Australia and [partner company] BSF Solutions ‘No Upfront Charge Loan Model’ provided short-term loans totalling over $34 million and charged over $70 million in fees to more than 100,000 consumers between July 2022 and December 2022,” deputy chair Sarah Court said at the time of the judgement. 

ASIC is seeking a court-ordered injunction that would prevent Mark Swanepoel and his business partner Brenton James Harrison from being allowed to carry out any business engaged with credit activity into the future. The court has yet to rule on this request or any other penalties. 

Cigno Australia’s social media accounts appear to have gone inactive, with the last Facebook post occurring in 2023. However, ����Vlog has seen evidence of the company still sending emails to former clients. 

While Cigno has appealed the Federal Court ruling against it, ����Vlog can reveal Mark Swanepoel’s brother Ryan Swanepoel, who was not the subject of the Federal Court action, has set up a new business that is using Cigno’s email domain to collect new clients. 

New lender Quickle using Cigno email domain 

In July 2024, Queensland resident Rachel got an email from Cigno informing her of the court’s ruling against it. “The Court has made orders that prohibit Cigno Australia and BSF Solutions from collecting any further fees, charges or other amounts from you,” the email read. 

She was initially relieved, thinking that the company who had provided her with multiple high-fee loans since 2020 was gone. 

“I lived a pretty high flying life until I ran out of money and then I was just borrowing left, right and centre,” says Rachel. “Cigno was terribly easy, so for me, it was a bit of a trap, for sure.” 

“I just thought finally, as I don’t want to ever have anything to do with them again. It’s terrible to think that they just have been able to continue for so long,” she says. 

However, in August 2024, she received another email asking if she needed help to “break free from this cycle” of  “skyrocketing bills” and “endless price hikes”. The email said it was from Cigno, and it came from the company’s domain name, but a hyperlink in the email went to the page of another company called Quickle. 

Quickle’s slick website offers Australians who are “short on cash” access to up to $75,000 through its network of loan providers. The company says it doesn’t charge people any fees to act as a go-between between them and the loan provider, but may receive an intermediary fee from the provider themselves. 

����Vlog has not been able to obtain documents detailing Quickle’s loan model, and the company did not respond to requests for more information. 

����Vlog is not suggesting that Quickle or Ryan Swanepoel are engaging in the illegal conduct that was the subject of the recent Federal Court ruling. 

However, Rachel says she is outraged this new entity emailed her using a Cigno email address and a Cigno email footer, and then linked to Quickle’s website. 

“In this financial climate, when people are struggling, I’m appalled that they don’t seem to care,” she says.

Who is behind Quickle? 

Cigno Loans was once a trading entity of Cigno Australia, but its website now says it is a business name of a company called FTA Data Solutions. Quickle’s website also says it is a business name of FTA Data Solutions. 

The director and secretary of FTA Data Solutions is listed as Ryan Swanepoel. Unlike the previous version of Cigno, FTA has been authorised by a credit licensee, Finance & Loans, the director of which is also Ryan Swanepoel.

A search of ASIC documents finds that FTA Data Solutions was first registered in August 2023. Its registered address is a co-working space on the Gold Coast. 

The contact address for the company is listed as the same Gold Coast address as another two companies of which Ryan is the sole director, Swan Management Services Pty Ltd and Swan Group Holdings Pty Ltd. 

Alongside Ryan as director, both Swan Management Services and Swan Group Holdings have listed Mark Swanepoel’s business partner Brenton James Harrison as their company secretary. 

Under questioning at the Senate estimates hearing in November 2024, ASIC executive director Chris Savundra shared the regulator’s awareness of FTA Data Solutions. 

“ASIC is aware of a new credit model being operated through the website Cignoloans.com.au, which appears to be operated by a credit licensee Finance and Loans Proprietary Limited. Its credit representative is FTA Data Solutions Proprietary Limited … We are currently considering that model and its compliance with the National Consumer Credit Protection Act and the ASIC Act,” he said. 

����Vlog sent questions to Cigno Australia and attempted to reach Quickle, but neither business responded. 

ASIC’s whack-a-mole with predatory lending models

The Consumer Action Law Centre (Consumer Action) in Melbourne has been helping clients of Cigno’s challenge their unaffordable and at times, as the Federal Court has found, illegal debts for years. Consumer Action’s director of policy and campaigns Tania Clarke says the number of calls they have received over their support lines relating to Cigno places the company among the most “predatory fringe lenders” on the market. 

Clarke is concerned to hear of a company looking to pick up new clients with Cigno’s emailing system.

Tom Abourizk, head of policy at ����Vlog, says Cigno has made a “mockery” of Australia’s credit laws for years. 

“Over the years, ASIC has used a range of enforcement powers in attempting to stop Cigno in its various forms, but every win has just led to another reincarnation using a slightly different legal structure or company,” he says. 

“The Cigno saga demonstrates that there are too many loopholes in our credit and corporation laws for bad actors to exploit. The complex loopholes in our credit laws need to be closed, and personal liability should be easier to impose.” 

Do you know more about Quickle? Contact ����Vlog Investigative Journalist Jarni Blakkarly at jblakkarly@choice.com.au

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