The movements on interest rates of credit cards by the four major banks over the past two years have revealed that banks have managed to keep about 85% of the net benefits that had been gained from the interest rate cuts imposed by the Reserve Bank of Australia.

As of March 01, the total impact of the RBA's movement in the official cash rate over the two years that have gone by was a fall of 3.5% from the high of 7.25% the was hit by the cycle in March of 2008.

While banks tend to pass of the majority of the RBA's interest rate cuts to borrowers of home loans, data from RateCity, the financial comparison website, has revealed that the big four banks kept an average 85% of the net benefits of the movement of interest rates from credit card borrowers.

A comparison of movements in interest rates that were charged on both standard and low-rate personal credit cards over the last two years revealed that the net impact of rate increases and cuts was an average fall of a mere 0.5%.