How to Buy Crypto with Westpac Bank

Wondering how to buy crypto with Westpac Bank? Apparently, according to their representative, you can’t deposit funds from Westpac Banking Corporation to crypto exchanges at all.

But it seems that the bank officially says one thing, and does another. This can be said for multiple banks in Australia.

For example, we had a long conversation with a spokesperson from Westpac who said that no transactions from Westpac accounts to a crypto exchange will go through.

However, multiple people we spoke to have Westpac accounts and have no trouble uploading sums of even $50,000 to crypto exchanges. So it seems to be a little confusing. In our experience, Westpac does happily facilitate deposits to crypto exchanges.

Westpac and crypto experiment

As an experiment, we uploaded around $200 to CoinJar, from a Westpac account and there was no hassle. The transaction went through and appeared in our CoinJar account.

When we uploaded $30,000 to a different exchange, the Westpac fraud team were on the phone to us within minutes.

Long-time users of Westpac and CoinJar have said that they deposit from their Westpac account to CoinJar often and never get a phone call or get their transaction blocked. So it seems to be a case of the official line being one thing, and actual functionality being another.

Westpac policy on crypto

There isn’t one. Seriously, Westpac refuse to state any policy on it or make anything clear for their customers.

The closest thing to a crypto policy is a press release distributed last year. In the name of scam protection, Westpac released a statement in May of 2023, saying that crypto transactions will be severely restricted.

In a nutshell, Westpac says that due to scammers tricking people into sending money directly to cryptocurrency exchanges, Westpac are putting the brakes on deposits to crypto exchanges.

The bank’s executive, Scott Collary, said, “Digital exchanges have a legitimate role to play in the financial ecosystem. But since the rise of digital currency, we’ve noticed that scammers are increasingly using overseas exchanges.”

Thanks to Westpac’s new stricter policies around crypto, they SAY they have blanket-banned most activities that have anything to do with cryptocurrency. This includes legitimate, Australian crypto exchanges who are fully compliant with local regulations. But that isn’t our experience.

Waiting… slowly dehydrating… for an official policy

We spoke to a Westpac representative who told us that they “cannot guarantee if transactions are going to be held or blocked because there's different layers of security… there is a probability that the transaction can't happen.”

The spokesperson said that if customers tried to transfer money to a crypto exchange, “there will probably be a rejection code and the code usually correlates to a reason for the rejection. So it usually goes into like your notifications or it might come up on the screen straight away.”

Westpac also did not seem to distinguish between dodgy, overseas crypto exchanges and locally-based exchanges registered with AUSTRAC. It seems to be a blanket-ban on all crypto exchanges. This is unlike other banks, for example, ANZ have blocked Binance but not other locally-registered exchanges.

No guarantee

The spokesperson said, “With cryptocurrencies, there's new people coming on the scene all the time. Things are constantly changing. So, in general, we do tend to block anything to do with cryptocurrencies.”

The spokesperson added they won’t guarantee that any transaction headed out to a crypto exchange will be actioned.

Again Westpac won't give specifics as to what they will and will not block. It’s all a bit of a roll of the dice. We hope for more clarity in the future.

So all we can do here is recommend that if you want to use a bank transfer to upload funds onto CoinJar, it is possible with Westpac, despite what they may officially say.

Westpac to CoinJar: The step by step guide

To deposit money from your Westpac account to CoinJar and buy some crypto, follow these steps.

Link your bank account

-First, ensure that you’ve verified your CoinJar account.

-Sign in to your CoinJar account.

-Navigate to Settings in the top menu bar.

-Go to the Linked Accounts section and click Add and then Account.

-Enter your personal bank account details and give it a nickname.

-Select Link bank account.

To verify your bank account, make a small deposit from this account to your CoinJar using either PayID or a standard bank transfer.

Once your deposit reaches your CoinJar, your bank account will be linked, and you can transfer funds from your Cash Account to your linked bank account.

Deposit funds

To deposit funds into your CoinJar, you have a few options: Your funds will be available in your CoinJar once the deposit is processed. Remember to verify that your bank account name matches the verified name on your CoinJar, and ensure that your bank account isn’t already connected to another CoinJar account.