The Halal Money app is the closest thing Australia has to Islamic neobanking: a Visa debit spending account and halal ETF investing in one app, run by the fintech arm of Hejaz, the country's largest Islamic finance group. It is genuinely useful and genuinely not a bank account, and both halves of that sentence matter. This review covers the features, the fees, the Shariah governance and the structural trade-off, verified against published materials on August 5, 2026.
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What the app actually is
Two products in one interface. First, a spending account with a Visa debit card, issued not by Hejaz but by Hay Limited (AFSL 515459), a payments provider, with Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayID and BPAY support: the everyday-money layer. Second, an investing account offering the Hejaz halal ETFs from $100 per trade at a flat A$10 brokerage, with trades settling through Openmarkets Nominees: the growth layer. The app operates in both Australia and the UK. What it is not: an authorised deposit-taking institution. Balances in the spending account are not deposits and carry no Financial Claims Scheme protection, a fact Hejaz's own pages disclose and this review will keep returning to, because it is the single most important thing to understand before parking cash there.
The spending account, honestly sized
As a halal everyday-money tool the account has a real pitch: it pays no interest, sits inside an ecosystem with named Shariah governance, and removes the small daily frictions of running a conventional account with the interest switched off. The honest limits: no FCS protection means it should hold spending-money balances, not savings; the account depends on a third-party issuer arrangement (Hay Limited) that users should understand they are exposed to; and no app-specific Shariah certificate is published for the spending account itself, a documentation gap in an otherwise well-papered group. For the fully conservative approach, keep the protected zero-interest bank account as your base layer and treat Halal Money as the investing front-end.
The investing layer: where the app earns its place
This is the strongest feature: the five ASX-listed Hejaz halal ETFs, accessible from $100, which turns halal investing from a broker-account project into a five-minute phone task. The lineup covers the core building blocks: ISLM for AAOIFI-screened global equities, SKUK for sukuk fixed income, HJZP for property, HJHI for high income and HHIF for innovation, all certified by the ANIC Shariah Board with semi-annual independent Shariah audits. The flat $10 brokerage is fair at moderate trade sizes and punishing at $100 trades (a 10% drag), so the sensible pattern is fewer, larger, regular buys rather than many small ones.
Five ETFs at a glance
| ETF (ASX code) | What it holds | Published performance (to 31 May 2026) |
|---|---|---|
| ISLM | Active global equities, AAOIFI-screened | 16.34% over one year; 11.56% p.a. since Oct 2022 listing |
| SKUK | Sovereign and corporate sukuk | -3.91% over one year; 2.63% p.a. since Nov 2023 listing |
| HJZP | Property exposure | See PDS and fund page for current figures |
| HJHI | High income strategy | See PDS and fund page for current figures |
| HHIF | High innovation strategy | See PDS and fund page for current figures |
Two honest notes on that table. Management fees live in the PDS documents rather than on the website: ISLM runs 1.89% p.a. plus estimated transaction costs and SKUK 1.33% p.a., active-management pricing that index-fund investors will find high. And SKUK's negative year is not a scandal, it is fixed income doing what fixed income does in adverse rate and currency conditions; treat it as the reminder that nothing in this app is a savings account. The full ETF review covers each fund in depth.
The Shariah governance stack
The underlying ETFs carry the strongest certification in Australian retail investing: ANIC Shariah Board certification with semi-annual independent audits, on top of Hejaz's named three-scholar Sharia Board (Dr Faizal Ahmed Al Manjoo, Dr Samir Alamad, Bilal Omarjee) and Minarah Consulting as external supervisory board. The gap, worth stating plainly: that stack certifies the funds, not the app. The spending account carries no published product-level Shariah documentation, which does not make it haram, an account that pays and charges no interest has a straightforward case, but does leave the market's best-governed group with one under-papered product. Asking Hejaz for app-level certification is exactly the kind of customer pressure that improves documentation standards.
Using it well: three practical habits
- Keep spending-money balances only: pay in what you plan to spend or invest this month, and hold savings in FCS-protected accounts or the halal savings ladder
- Batch your ETF buys: at a flat $10 per trade, one $1,000 monthly buy costs 1% in brokerage where ten $100 buys cost 10%
- Match funds to horizons: ISLM and HHIF for long-horizon money, SKUK and HJHI for the income sleeve, and nothing in the app for the emergency fund
How it compares
Against a conventional broker: any ASX broker can buy the same five ETFs, often cheaper per trade at scale, but without the halal-first interface or the from-$100 accessibility, and one unit through a big broker suits larger portfolios fine. Against doing nothing: the app's real competition is inertia, the Muslim saver whose money idles in a conventional account earning riba or nothing, and against that opponent it wins decisively. Against a real Islamic bank: no contest is possible yet, because none exists; if Islamic Money launches deposits in 2027, the FCS-protected layer the app lacks would finally have a halal occupant, and the two products would complement rather than compete.
The UK expansion, briefly
One under-noticed fact: Halal Money operates in the UK as well as Australia, making it one of very few Australian-born Islamic finance products exported into the world's most mature Western Islamic banking market, where it competes against actual licensed Islamic banks rather than an empty field. That is a stress test the app chose voluntarily, and its survival there says something about the product's genuine usability. For Australian users the practical relevance is continuity: family members across both countries can run the same halal tooling, a small convenience that matters to exactly the diaspora households this market serves.
Who should and should not use it
Use it if you want the lowest-friction path into certified halal ETFs, especially at portfolio sizes where $100-500 regular investing is the realistic pattern, or if you value running daily spending inside a halal-governed ecosystem and can live within the no-FCS constraint. Skip it if your investing runs through an SMSF or large broker account where per-trade costs matter less than fee percentages, or if you were hoping it replaces a bank account: it does not, and its own disclosure says so. Either way, the savings ladder still needs its protected base layer underneath anything the app does.
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The bottom line
Halal Money is a good product wearing accurate labels: a halal investing app with a spending account attached, not a bank in your pocket. The ETF access is genuinely excellent, the governance behind the funds is the market's best, the fees are disclosed if you read the PDS, and the FCS gap is stated rather than hidden. Use it for what it is, size the balances accordingly, and keep asking the one question its paperwork leaves open: where is the spending account's own certificate?