Why I built Card Monkey
Julie has a credit card problem – she does not have her own credit card. Her card has always run off my account, my points, my statement. It never felt like an issue.
Then I actually sat down and thought about it properly. I cycle and ski a lot — I have been in the ER of hospitals in five different countries. I am no spring chicken. One day Julie could be standing at a checkout with a card that’s frozen the moment the bank hears I’m gone. No credit history of her own. No card to fall back on while probate sorts itself out. That’s a problem that needs to be fixed.
So the task was simple on paper: find Julie a card in her own name. Decent sign-up bonus, low fees, lounge access, because she still travels enough that it should pay for itself. Simple, until I went looking for a genuinely unbiased credit card comparison — one without a sponsored top three — and realised how many people are stuck doing this exact search for reasons a lot less tidy than mine.
It’s not just Julie’s problem
Two groups keep coming up when I think about who actually needs this.
The first is everyone HSBC just cut loose. HSBC has been closing out its credit card business in Australia, and a chunk of people who’d held one of those cards for years — sometimes decades — are suddenly back in the market with no idea where to start. They’re not shopping because they want to. They’re shopping because the decision was made for them.
The second is older Australians who apply for a card, get knocked back or have an existing card pulled — sometimes over something as ordinary as a bank tightening its lending criteria — and then find most comparison sites are built around sign-up bonuses and annual spend targets aimed at someone twenty or thirty years younger. Nobody’s built the version for someone who just wants something straightforward that they’ll actually be approved for.
Both groups have the same problem underneath: they’re not choosing a card from a position of “which one’s best,” they’re choosing from a position of “I need one and I don’t know where mine went.” That’s a worse experience, and it’s exactly where a comparison tool should be doing more work, not less.
Why I built it myself
I’ve spent a chunk of my career on the other side of this — inside the banks, on the teams that build this exact kind of product. So I know what’s usually sitting behind a “compare cards” page: a spreadsheet somebody updates by hand, weeks or months out of date, missing half the detail that actually matters. I’ve seen how the sausage gets made. I figured I could do better with the data now available and a bit of patience.
Second time lucky
This wasn’t my first crack at it either. I tried building something similar with Gemini first. Didn’t work — the output wasn’t reliable enough to put in front of anyone, let alone Julie, let alone someone who just lost their HSBC card and needs a straight answer. I switched to Claude for the rebuild, and this time it held together.
The banks all publish their card data through Open Banking — the Consumer Data Right, or CDR, if you want the technical name. In theory that means every bank’s rates, fees, and features sit in a standard, machine-readable format anyone can pull. In practice, it’s a blob. Every bank structures their side of it slightly differently, buries things in odd fields, and describes the same feature five different ways. Reading that cleanly and turning it into something a normal person can compare is most of the actual work.
What I actually needed it to do
Personal and business, kept separate. Most comparison sites blend the two, which makes no sense — the cards, the criteria, and the person looking are completely different. Card Monkey splits them from the start.
Actually reading the data, not guessing at it. I didn’t want the AI making things up to fill gaps. It reads the real CDR product data from each bank and works from that — rewards program, card type, fees, lounge access, whether insurance is included. If a bank hasn’t reported something, Card Monkey doesn’t invent an answer.
Annual fees that mean something. Banks report fees in every billing period imaginable — monthly, annual, sometimes buried in a fee schedule that doesn’t say either. Card Monkey annualises everything to one number so you’re comparing like for like.
A favourites function. Small thing, but useful when you’re comparing more than one or two — shortlist a few cards, come back later without starting the search over.
Why it’s actually unbiased
This isn’t Finder, or Canstar, or the other big comparison sites — and to be fair, some of them do a genuinely good job. But they’re built to run on affiliate income: they get paid when you click through and get approved, so the rankings are doing double duty as a business model. That’s not a knock, it’s just how those sites work.
Card Monkey isn’t built like that. There’s no affiliate deal behind any of the cards it shows you, and no bank pays for placement — it’s built purely to suit me, and now anyone else who wants an unbiased comparison, not a sponsored one.
I will say — since we’re being upfront about it — there’s an Airalo eSIM banner at the top of the page. Small cross-sell, same deal as everywhere else on Points Brotherhood. Doesn’t change what the tool does or how the cards are ranked.
One thing it doesn’t do yet: actually walk someone through how a senior applies for a credit card in the first place — eligibility, income tests, what banks actually look at. That’s a real gap and it’s next on my list, separate from the tool itself.
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If HSBC just closed your account, or you’re starting over
HSBC’s Star Alliance card is the closest points-earning match to what a lot of people just lost, so it’s worth reading our HSBC Star Alliance review for what that card actually offered — useful context for what to look for in a replacement. From there, the honest reviews behind the shortlist are all here: CommBank Ultimate Awards, NAB Rewards Signature, Westpac Altitude Black, St George Amplify, and ANZ Frequent Flyer Black. Card Monkey narrows the field fast; these are where I’ve actually used the cards.
Try it
Card Monkey is live now: cardmonkey-au.web.app. Search by bank, rewards program, personal or business, fee cap, lounge access, insurance — whatever matters to you. If HSBC just closed your account, or a card got pulled and you’re starting again, the shortlist filters get you to a real answer fast, not a sponsored top three. Julie’s card came out of the same process — no annual fee, decent sign-up bonus, lounge access she’ll actually use.
Frequently Asked Questions
My HSBC credit card is being closed — what should I look for in a replacement?
Start with what mattered most about the HSBC card you had — no annual fee, a rewards program, lounge access — and filter Card Monkey on that. There’s no like-for-like HSBC replacement since they’ve exited the market, but you can usually match or beat the individual features.
I got knocked back for a credit card — will Card Monkey tell me if I’ll be approved?
No — approval depends on the bank’s own credit assessment, which Card Monkey doesn’t have access to. What it does do is let you filter to realistic options (lower fees, simpler criteria) rather than chasing premium cards aimed at high income earners.
Is Card Monkey an unbiased credit card comparison?
Yes. It’s not affiliated with any bank, Finder, or Canstar. It’s built on publicly available Open Banking (CDR) data, no bank pays for placement, and there’s no commercial ranking deal behind it.
How current is the card data?
It’s pulled directly from each bank’s Consumer Data Right Product Reference API, so it reflects what the banks themselves currently report — not a manually updated spreadsheet.
Does Card Monkey cover business credit cards?
Yes — personal and business cards are kept separate rather than blended into one list.
Is the annual fee figure exact?
It’s a best-effort annualised estimate from whatever billing period the bank reports (monthly fees x 12, etc). Always confirm the exact figure on the bank’s own page before applying.
Does using Card Monkey cost anything?
No, it’s free to use.
