Cash ETFs on the ASX: The Complete Guide to AAA, BILL, ISEC, MMKT, MONY and MQIO

The live category table — updated continuously — is here: High Interest Cash ETFs (ReviewETF)

This blog is the editorial walkthrough of what's actually inside each fund, what they're really paying right now, when the distributions hit your account, and how to trade them efficiently.

The 30-second version

• Six core cash ETFs are listed on the ASX, with combined assets of roughly $7.8 billion.

• The RBA cash rate is 4.35% (raised on 5 May 2026), and cash ETFs are paying between 4.10% and 4.85% right now.

• All six pay monthly distributions — your interest hits your brokerage account once a month, every month.

• There is no lock-up, no break fee, no notice period. You can sell on T+0 and have your money back the next business day.

• The "Cash Plus" funds (MMKT, MONY, MQIO) earn an extra 25–55 basis points above plain cash funds by holding short-term corporate credit instead of just bank deposits. That's not free — they carry a small amount of credit risk that AAA and BILL don't.

Why this category exists at all

Most Australians keep their emergency fund or short-term cash in a savings account paying 0.5% to maybe 4% if they hunt for a bonus rate every month. Term deposits lock the money up.

Cash ETFs solve a real problem: you get an institutional wholesale rate, paid monthly, with daily liquidity, inside your normal brokerage account. No bank app, no maturity date, no "introductory rate that drops after 4 months".

The numbers tell the story. As of May 2026:

If your bonus saver requires monthly deposits, no withdrawals, salary credits, and three bills paid via that account, you're not really earning 4.50% on cash sitting there — you're earning it on a tiny disciplined chunk. A cash ETF gives you the same number without the games.

The six funds, ranked by what they actually pay right now

Read off the chart top-to-bottom:

1. MQIO — Macquarie Income Opportunities (~4.85%) — the only fund yielding above the RBA cash rate. That's because it isn't pure cash — it's an active credit fund stretching into longer-dated corporate bonds and floating-rate notes. Highest yield in the table also = highest credit risk.

2. MMKT — Betashares Cash Plus (~4.55%) — Betashares' enhanced cash fund. Bank bills + short-term investment grade credit + FRNs. The sweet spot for most people.

3. MONY — VanEck Cash Plus (~4.55%) — VanEck's competitor to MMKT, listed Feb 2026, similar yield profile, slightly lower fee.

4. AAA — Betashares High Interest Cash (4.30%) — the original, the biggest ($5.2B), the simplest. Pure at-call bank deposits with the big-4. The category benchmark.

5. ISEC — iShares Enhanced Cash (4.25%) — middle ground. Mostly bank bills with a sleeve of investment-grade credit.

6. BILL — iShares Core Cash (4.10%) — the cheapest (0.07% MER) and the lowest-yielding. Almost pure bank bills with very short duration. Lowest risk, lowest yield.

The whole spread between BILL and MQIO is 75 basis points — that's the price of stretching from pure bank-bill cash into short corporate credit.

What's actually inside each one (this is where the differences live)

The names look identical. The holdings are not.

Here's what each fund actually holds:

AAA — Betashares High Interest Cash

100% at-call deposits with the major Australian banks (NAB, ANZ, Westpac, CBA). When you buy AAA, you are effectively pooling money with other AAA holders into wholesale deposit accounts at the big-4. There is no maturity, no bond, no credit on a balance sheet — just bank deposits paying institutional rates.
Risk profile: equivalent to holding a savings account with a big-4 Australian bank.

BILL — iShares Core Cash

~80% bank bills and NCDs (negotiable certificates of deposit) issued by AU big-4 + Macquarie, ~15% at-call deposits, ~5% short-term credit. Weighted average maturity is under 90 days.
Risk profile: essentially bank credit risk, very short duration. Slightly different to AAA only in that bills can move a few basis points in value day to day.

ISEC — iShares Enhanced Cash

Bank bills plus a sleeve of ~35% investment-grade corporate credit stretching out to ~12 months maturity.
Risk profile: introduces corporate credit risk for the first time. In a credit shock, ISEC will mark down a few bps while AAA won't.

MMKT — Betashares Cash Plus

The Betashares "step up". ~40% bank bills + ~30% short IG credit + ~18% longer FRNs (floating-rate notes). Aims to beat the Bloomberg AusBond Bank Bill Index. Distribution yield has been the most stable in the enhanced-cash bucket.

MONY — VanEck Cash Plus

Launched February 2026. Holds a more diversified set of bank deposits (45 issuers including credit unions, regional banks and offshore subsidiaries) plus short corporate credit. Same yield-to-worst as MMKT (~4.55%), slightly lower MER (0.15% vs 0.18%).

MQIO — Macquarie Income Opportunities

Not a cash fund. It's a short-duration active credit fund that invests further out the curve — investment-grade and select sub-investment-grade corporate bonds, FRNs, hybrids. That's how it gets to 4.85% running yield. But that's also why the MER is 0.49% (vs 0.18% for AAA) and why it can lose money in a credit-spread blowout.

Translation: AAA = "savings account in ETF form". BILL = "savings account with a bond wrapper". ISEC/MMKT/MONY = "savings account + corporate credit kicker". MQIO = "short-duration active bond fund called cash".

How the yield actually works (it tracks the RBA)

This is the chart most people haven't seen. Cash ETF yields don't pay a fixed rate. They pay a floating rate that tracks the RBA cash rate within a few weeks, with a small premium on top.

What this means in practice:

• When the RBA cut from 4.35% → 3.60% through 2025, AAA's yield fell from ~4.25% to ~3.50% over the same period. You can't lock the higher rate in by buying earlier.

• When the RBA hiked back to 4.35% in early 2026, AAA's yield went straight back up to ~4.30% within weeks. Nothing to do. No re-investment risk.

• The enhanced-cash funds (MMKT, MONY, ISEC) sit ~20-25bps above the RBA cash rate because they're earning a small credit spread. The MQIO running yield sits ~50bps above because it's reaching further.

This is the big mental model: a cash ETF is a floating-rate exposure to short-term Australian wholesale funding markets. If the RBA cuts again in August, every fund on the chart will be paying less. If the RBA hikes, they will all be paying more. You are not locking in 4.30%, you are locking in "whatever the RBA does plus a small spread".

That's the opposite of a term deposit — and for most use cases, far more useful.

How distributions actually hit your account

Every fund here pays monthly. The cycle works the same way for every one:

Example — AAA's May 2026 distribution:

• Ex-date: 1 May 2026

• Latest distribution: $0.1723 per unit (~0.34% of NAV for that month)

• Payment date: 11 May 2026

If you own 1,000 units of AAA, you got $172.30 paid into your broker's cash account on 11 May. Annualised, that single month's distribution rolls up to ~4.30% per year.

A practical wrinkle: if you buy units on or after the ex-date, you've bought the unit ex-distribution — you won't receive that month's payment. The unit price drops by roughly the distribution amount on the ex-date, so it's a wash, but it surprises people the first time it happens.

How to trade these efficiently

Cash ETFs trade like any ASX-listed security. A few mechanics worth knowing:

Use limit orders, not market orders.

Cash ETF spreads are very tight — usually under 1 cent — but they can briefly widen at the open and close. For a $50 unit, a 2-cent spread = 4 basis points = ~10 days of yield gone. On a $100k position, that's $40. Use a limit at the midpoint and you'll almost always get filled.

The market makers iNAV is your reference price.

Every cash ETF has an indicative NAV ("iNAV") that updates throughout the day. You can see it on the ASX site or via your broker. Don't pay more than ~3-4 cents above iNAV for AAA or BILL. For MMKT, MONY and MQIO, allow a slightly wider band (5-8 cents) because the underlying bonds repricing intraday is less clean.

Time of day matters slightly.

The market makers are most active 10:30am–3:30pm. Don't trade in the opening auction (10:00am-10:10am) or the closing auction (4:00pm-4:10pm) — spreads widen materially. Mid-session is best.

Brokerage matters more than the spread.

A $9.50 brokerage charge on a $5,000 purchase = 19 basis points = about 2 weeks of yield. If you're using a cash ETF for the emergency fund and DCA-ing in, use a free or near-free broker — Pearler (free for monthly auto-invests on selected ETFs), Stake ($3 brokerage), Webull, CommSec Pocket, or NABTrade for larger trades. Don't pay $20 to buy $1,000 of AAA.

CHESS-sponsored vs custodial — your call but it matters in size.

For amounts above ~$100k, prefer CHESS-sponsored (Selfwealth, CommSec, NABTrade, Stake CHESS) over custodial models. Cash ETFs are very safe, but the custodial wrapper adds a tiny extra counterparty link that you can avoid.

When does each one make sense?

Pick AAA if…

• You want the absolute lowest risk in the category — straight bank deposits.

• You want the biggest fund with the deepest liquidity ($5.2B AUM, tightest spreads).

• You're parking $50k+ that you might need in a hurry.

Pick BILL if…

• You want the lowest cost (0.07% MER vs 0.18% for AAA).

• You're comfortable with bank-bill rather than at-call exposure (essentially identical risk in practice).

• Your portfolio is fee-sensitive and you'd rather give up 20bps of yield than 11bps of MER.

Pick ISEC or MMKT if…

• You want a small yield uplift (25-50bps) for taking a tiny amount of credit risk.

• You're parking cash for 6+ months and don't need bank-deposit-grade safety.

• These are the sweet spot for most cash positions in 2026.

Pick MONY if…

• You like MMKT but prefer VanEck's slightly more diversified deposit list.

• The 3bps lower MER matters to you.

• You can live with the fact it only launched in Feb 2026 — no track record.

Pick MQIO if…

• You're comfortable that this is not really cash — it's a short-duration active credit fund.

• You're using it as a fixed-income satellite, not as your emergency fund.

• You can stomach a 1-3% drawdown in a credit-spread blowout (which won't happen to AAA).

Don't use any of them as a "set and forget" inflation hedge.

Cash ETF yields move with the RBA. If we go back to 2021-style 0.10% rates, you'll be earning 0.10% plus 20bps. They are a short-term parking vehicle, not a long-term inflation hedge. For that, see our bond ETF guide.

Where they fit in a real portfolio

A few use cases that actually work:

The emergency fund

6 months of expenses in AAA or BILL. Daily liquidity, 4%+ yield, no maturity to manage. Better than a Big-4 savings account in every dimension.

The "I'm waiting for a market dip" parking spot

12-24 months of intended deployment in MMKT or ISEC. Pick up 30bps of extra yield while you wait. Sell on T+0 when you want to deploy into equities.

The fixed-income sleeve for a conservative portfolio

3-5% allocation to MQIO alongside a longer-duration bond ETF like VAF or VGB. The MQIO sleeve gives you running income with minimal duration risk while the bond ETF gives you duration in case rates fall.

The retirees' cash buffer

1-3 years of pension drawings in AAA + MMKT (50/50 split). Pure capital preservation with monthly income. Avoids forced selling of growth assets during drawdowns — see our SMSF playbook for the sequence-risk framing.

The "I don't trust the banks right now" allocation

Anything in AAA (pure deposit exposure to big-4) or BILL (almost identical). This is the lowest-risk allocation you can hold in the Australian financial system that still earns a real rate.

The wrap

Cash ETFs are the most undersold corner of the ASX. They are not exciting, they will not appear in a top-1-year-returns blog, and they will never make a YouTuber's "10x by 2030" thumbnail. But they solve a real problem better than any retail product on the market: how do I earn the wholesale cash rate on idle money without locking it up?

Six funds. Two genuine flavours — plain cash (AAA, BILL) and cash plus credit kicker (ISEC, MMKT, MONY), with one outlier active credit fund (MQIO). All pay monthly. All track the RBA. All trade on a tight spread on the ASX.

For the live comparison table that updates as yields and AUM change, head to the ReviewETF High Interest Cash ETF page.

Returns and AUM from CBOE Australia Monthly Funds Report, April 2026. Distribution dates and yields from issuer fact sheets and InvestSMART, May 2026. RBA cash rate of 4.35% as of 5 May 2026 RBA decision. This article is general information only and not personal financial advice. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future performance — and for cash ETFs specifically, yields will change as the RBA cash rate changes.

ReviewETF live category tables:

• High Interest Cash ETFs (live)

• Fixed Income ETFs (live)

Further reading on ReviewETF:

• The ultimate list of dividend-paying ETFs on the ASX, ranked by 5-year data

• Every bond and fixed income ETF on the ASX — the complete guide

• Best ETFs for your SMSF — the behavioural trap nobody talks about

• Best ETFs for Australian retirees in 2026