Data banking, or data rollover, is a plan feature that lets you keep any unused data from the previous month (or expiry/recharge period) by rolling it over to your data allowance for the next month (or recharge period).
This essentially increases the value of your plan in the long run because you'll get access to your data bank if you ever need to go over your monthly plan limit.
Usually, plan inclusions reset at the end of the month so any unused data disappears, replaced by your allowance for the next month.
For example, if you get 10GB to use each month with your plan, but only use 8GB a month, you've effectively lost the 2GB of data you didn't use because your plan resets the next month.
With data rollover, leftover data is either added onto your allowance for the next period or is stored in a data bank for future use.
Data rollover often has limitations on the maximum amount of data you can save, and if you let your plan expire, you'll lose any data you've saved up.
The plans listed below all have data banking as an included feature.
While data rollover seems like a universally useful feature, not all major providers offer it. There are currently 24 providers on Finder that offer some form of data banking.
Only 2 of these providers offer unlimited data banking - amaysim and Belong. We've covered some of the major providers below that offer this feature to give you an idea of what you can expect.
Australia's largest mobile provider, Telstra, has a data bank available on its prepaid plans. You can rollover up to 200GB of data on its 28-day prepaid plans as long as you recharge before your expiry period.
amaysim's data bank is pretty impressive. It's 1 of 2 mobile providers in Australia to offer unlimited data banking. Most providers in Australia offer 200 or 500GB.
You'll get access to an unlimited data bank with amaysim on all its plans except its PAYG one. This data bank lasts for as long as you stay on your plan so you don't have to worry about it going anywhere.
Boost Mobile offers data rollover on all its 28-day prepaid plans. Unlike other providers that let you bank your data up to a certain limit, Boost's only lasts until your next recharge period, which isn't as handy.
Vodafone's Prepaid Plus plans come with data banking up to 200GB. Keep in mind that its Pay and Go plans don't come with this feature.
ALDImobile has a decent range of cheap mobile plans with unlimited data rollover on all its mobile plans (except its PAYG plan) when you recharge within 24 hours of expiry.
Lebara comes with a 200GB data bank on its 30-day, 180-day and 360-day expiry prepaid plans if you recharge within 48 hours of expiry.
You can also gift up to 10GB of banked data to other Lebara customers every 30 days.
While data rollover is definitely a useful feature to have on your mobile plan, it's only really valuable for you if you have variable data usage patterns from one month to the next.
For example, let's say you've spent quite a bit of time at home not using your mobile data on your phone, and then decided to go on a camping trip for a week. If you've got data banking included in your mobile plan, you may have built up some extra data to use when you're camping, so you run less risk of going over your normal monthly data limit.
If you're someone who comes close to or uses up your data allocation each month, data banking might not be as useful for you since you won't have a lot to rollover to the next month.
Keep in mind that some providers have terms and conditions built into their data banks. For example, Woolworths Mobile won't let you keep your data bank if you switch between different plans, whereas Belong lets you keep building your data bank no matter which one of its plans you've signed up to.
Whether having a phone plan with data rollover is worth it or not really depends on your mobile usage habits. But since this is a feature you don't need to pay extra each month for, it's definitely worth considering and might be enough of a reason for you to choose one provider over another.
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