Westpac Imposes A$10,000 Monthly Limit on Crypto Exchange Transfers
The Australian bank is implementing a cumulative monthly ceiling to combat rising financial scams.
Starting December 1, Westpac customers purchasing digital assets by transferring Australian dollars from the bank to a cryptocurrency exchange will face a strict monthly spending cap. The institution announced that it may restrict payments identified as directed toward cryptocurrency exchanges to a cumulative monthly ceiling of A$10,000 per customer.
The A$10,000 limit applies across all relevant accounts held by an individual customer in a calendar month, covering channels such as Online Banking, the Westpac App, and debit or credit cards. For joint accounts, each individual holder will be granted a separate A$10,000 threshold. Once a customer reaches the cap, subsequent payments may be rejected until the start of the next calendar month.
Westpac stated that it will not grant exemptions or raise the limit for any customer, although it cannot guarantee that a transaction exceeding the A$10,000 threshold will be completely blocked. Furthermore, payments made to an exchange in a physical bank branch will no longer be supported. However, incoming funds from exchanges into Westpac accounts will remain unaffected by the new rule.
The bank linked the policy shift to the proliferation of scams, noting that criminals increasingly direct victims toward digital assets because the funds are notoriously difficult to recover once sent. Citing the National Anti-Scam Centre's Targeting Scams Report 2025, published in March 2026, Westpac pointed out that cryptocurrency was involved in 46 percent of reported scam losses during the previous year.
This latest measure builds on Westpac's earlier initiatives, which included trialing blocks on certain cryptocurrency payments starting in May 2023. Because the specific list of targeted exchanges will remain private and unreleased by the bank, customers will not know beforehand whether a given transfer will count toward their monthly limit.
Westpac is not the first major Australian lender to establish this specific financial threshold. In June 2023, reports indicated that the Commonwealth Bank of Australia planned to enforce a similar A$10,000 calendar month restriction on customer payments directed to cryptocurrency platforms as part of broader efforts to curb fraud.