- Westpac, one of Australia’s four big banks, is reported to be capping customer payments to crypto exchanges at A$10,000 a month from December, with no exemptions and no higher limits on request.
- Money coming back the other way, withdrawals from exchanges into Westpac accounts, is reported to be unchanged.
- We could not find the bank’s own announcement, so the detail below rests on secondary reporting by The Defiant.
A bank deciding how much of your own money you may send to a crypto exchange sounds like an Australian problem. It isn’t. Several UK banks have been doing versions of this for two years, and the reasoning behind Westpac’s cap is the same reasoning sitting behind theirs.
If you buy crypto in instalments from a UK current account, a monthly ceiling is the restriction most likely to catch you out, and it is the one people notice last. A single large purchase gets declined and you know about it immediately. A cap that adds up across every account you hold with the same bank only bites halfway through the month, usually at the moment you were trying to act on a price.
Worth being clear about what this type of limit is and isn’t. It restricts outgoing payments to identified exchange destinations. It does not stop you holding crypto, and it does not stop you moving money back out of an exchange into your account.
What is reported to be changing
From December, according to The Defiant, Westpac customers will be able to send up to A$10,000 a month to crypto exchanges, roughly £5,000 at current rates. The limit is said to combine across accounts rather than applying per account, and there is no process for requesting an exemption or a higher ceiling.
We have not been able to locate Westpac’s own statement of the policy, so treat the specifics as the aggregator’s account rather than a confirmed bank position. The broad direction is consistent with what the Australian majors have been doing: Commonwealth Bank and others have been limiting or blocking payments to crypto platforms since 2023, generally citing scam losses.
Why banks do this at all
The honest answer is liability, and in the UK it is unusually concrete.
Authorised push payment fraud is the category where a customer is tricked into sending money themselves, rather than having their account hacked. Investment scams, fake exchanges, the recovery scam that offers to retrieve money lost in an earlier scam. Since October 2024, UK payment firms have been required to reimburse victims of this kind of fraud in most cases, with the cost split between the bank that sent the payment and the bank that received it.
That changed the maths for the sending bank. A payment to a crypto exchange that turns out to have been a scam is now partly the sending bank’s bill, and the bank cannot see what happens to the money once it arrives. A hard monthly cap is a blunt instrument, but it caps the exposure too.
Where UK customers already stand
The restrictions here are a patchwork rather than a rule. Some banks block payments to crypto platforms entirely. Others allow them with daily and monthly limits that are often lower than Westpac’s. Several app-based banks are more permissive and have become the default route for people who buy regularly. Limits change without much notice, which is why it is worth checking your own bank’s current position rather than relying on what worked last year. Our guide to UK banks and crypto payments covers where the main ones sit.
The Financial Conduct Authority sits behind a good deal of this indirectly. It has spent two years tightening what firms can say to consumers about crypto, and it took HTX to the High Court this autumn over unlawful promotions to UK customers. Banks reading that environment have tended to err towards restriction.
If a payment gets declined
A few practical points, none of which are advice about whether to buy anything. A declined transfer is usually a policy block rather than a fault, so repeating it rarely helps and can flag the account. Banks that allow crypto payments generally publish their limits, so the realistic options are moving to one that does, spreading purchases across months, or using a provider that accepts debit card payments where bank transfer is blocked. Card purchases typically carry higher fees than a transfer, which is the trade-off nobody mentions.
Moving money the other way is a separate question, and one the Westpac change is reported not to touch. If you are planning to take money off an exchange, our guide to withdrawals covers the common delays.
What to watch
Whether Westpac publishes the policy itself, and whether the cap is reviewed once it has run for a quarter. The Commonwealth Bank limits introduced in 2023 were presented as temporary and largely stayed.
Closer to home, watch whether any UK bank cites reimbursement costs explicitly when it next changes its crypto limits. So far most have talked about scam protection in general terms. The moment one of them puts a figure on what crypto-related fraud reimbursement is costing it, the rest of the sector’s limits start to look less like caution and more like a settled price.