What is the best credit card for people with a thin credit file in Australia?
+
The best card for people with a thin credit file in Australia depends on your exact spending and credit. The shortlist above holds 8 cards for this profile, each chosen because it fits people with a thin credit file: cards for someone with a short or sparse credit history — an existing but limited file — that add a new tradeline, report monthly, and thicken a file so lenders can finally score it well.
How did you choose these cards for people with a thin credit file?
+
We start from every card we hold in Australia, keep those that suit people with a thin credit file, and rank them on estimated first-year value for a typical people with a thin credit file profile: rewards from the card's earn rates, plus a welcome offer the page can print, minus the annual fee. A card whose annual fee we cannot state ranks after every card whose fee we can. Nothing here is pay-to-rank.
Why do some cards show no annual fee figure?
+
Because we hold no confirmed figure for it. Our fee column used to default to zero, and many cards still carry a zero that no check has confirmed — so a zero on its own cannot be told apart from a field nobody filled in, and printing “A$0” there would invent a price. A card shows a fee where a positive one is on record, or where a zero was confirmed against the issuer's terms; otherwise the slot reads “Not confirmed”, and the issuer's own page is the place to check before you apply.
How are these cards ranked?
+
By that estimated value, computed by the same rules for every card, with one adjustment: a card that matches this guide's goal gains 15% of its estimated value (at least 25) in the ordering, so it can rank above a card with a higher estimated value. The figure printed on each pick is the estimate itself, without that adjustment. Our methodology page sets the rules out in full. Each card's review page marks which of its figures a published document states.