Savings accounts that earn Qantas Points: Is AMP better than Qudos?

Which account earns the most points? I've crunched the numbers.

There's a lot of change happening with bank accounts that let you earn Qantas Points on your savings right now.

Bankwest has dropped out of the market. Its Bankwest Qantas Transaction Account offered Qantas Points on every dollar in your account to $50,000. But the account won't be open to new applicants from 15 May 2025, and existing account holders will be moved to other accounts from 1 September this year, a statement from the bank confirms. So if you don't have the account already, it's not worth getting.

Meanwhile, AMP has launched a new partnership that does lets you earn Qantas Points on its AMP Bank Everyday Account. That means it joins the Qudos Qantas Points Saver as one of just two widely-available accounts in Australia which let you earn Qantas Points via banking.

The accounts themselves are very different: the AMP offering is an everyday transaction account, while the Qudos is designed for longer-term saving. Let's look at how many Qantas Points you could earn from each of them, and if better alternatives exist. (For a different approach again, we've also looked at a term deposit that earns Qantas Points.)

How many Qantas Points can I earn from AMP's everyday account?

AMP calculates the number of Qantas Points you'll earn based on the average balance in your account over the month. Remember, your everyday account will be full when your salary gets paid in, but by the end of the month it will likely be empty.

For a simple representative example, I took the average Australian salary ($88,000), subtracted standard tax, and then assumed you'd spend your money from the account evenly over a 31-day month. (I'm ignoring any bonus offers here so we can focus on the long-term value.)

In this scenario, the average monthly balance is $2,779.56, and that will earn you 277 points in a month. In a year, that would total 3,324 Qantas Points.

At our standard valuation of 2 cents per Qantas Point, that's worth around $66.48.

In practical terms, it's not even half a Sydney-Melbourne Classic Rewards flight. All points are welcome, but that's not a massively impressive number. Even if you're earning twice the average salary, you're looking at around $130 in points value.

Interestingly, the AMP account will let you earn points on balances up to $5 million. If you left $5 million in the account for a year (lucky you!), you'd earn 6 million Qantas Points. That equates to $120,000 in value.

That's a lot of Qantas Points, but it's still a poor outcome. If you put that money into a 12-month term deposit at 4.50% with interest paid on maturity you'd earn $225,000, per our term deposit calculator. That's way more than the points are worth.

I know, I know: you don't have $5 million lying around anyway. But it's a reminder that pursuing points for its own sake is not always the right move. (In reality, you'd probably have to split $5 million over multiple deposits because of balance limits, but that doesn't change the maths.)

Bottom line: The bonus points here are nice, but not compelling. If you're looking to build a points balance, you'll likely still do better via a credit card bonus sign-up and a careful spending strategy than with this approach. It's not hard to get 50,000 bonus points or more.

How many Qantas Points can I earn from a high-interest savings account?

The Qudos Qantas Points Saver is a very different beast. You get 400 Qantas Points per year for every $1,000 of your balance, credited monthly.

Finder's Consumer Sentiment Tracker shows that as of December 2024, the average Australian has $39,407 in savings and adds $742 each month.

In that scenario, you'd earn around 17,496 Qantas Points in a year. That's worth an effective $349.92. (Again, we're taking 2 cents per Qantas Point as the base value.)

You'd also earn around $1,770.57 in interest over the year, assuming the current interest rate of 4.00% holds. (That's not a given, as the rate does vary over time.)

In total, you'll have earned around $2,127 in value (Qantas Points plus interest combined). That's going to be a more effective outcome than the AMP account for most people. (This does assume you're hitting the monthly savings goal though - on a lower income, AMP would potentially be more appealing).

The Qudos account lets you earn Qantas Points on balances up to $1 million. In the admittedly unlikely event that you left $1 million in the Qudos account for a year, you would earn around 400,000 Qantas Points and $40,741in interest. That's quite appealing, but I would still want to pay off my mortgage first!

The bottom line? Everyone's needs differ. Both these accounts offer an effective but not earth-shattering way of topping up your Qantas Points. If your goals are broader than just accumulating Qantas Points, you may want to look at other options for getting the most for your savings.

In most scenarios, the Qudos delivers more total value (interest plus points) by my calculations. The AMP account will help you earn a handful of extra points for daily transactions, but won't be as useful for that as a credit card that earns Qantas Points on every dollar spent, especially once you factor bonus offers in.

We updated this guide on 23 April 2025 with a full analysis of the new AMP account.