Commonwealth Bank of Australia is Australia's largest commercial bank. From now on, its customers will be prohibited from using their credit cards to purchase cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.
Due to the lack of supervision of digital currencies and high price volatility, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) has banned credit card purchases of digital currencies. Not only that, this ban will also extend to Bankwest, a bank headquartered in Perth, Australia, which has been fully acquired by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. However, this transaction restriction will not affect bank account customers. In other words, customers can still use their debit cards to buy and sell cryptocurrency.
The Commonwealth Bank of Australia also issued an announcement explaining the reason for prohibiting customers from using credit cards to purchase digital currencies, stating:
“This decision was made because we believe that virtual currencies do not comply with regulatory requirements when compared to the legal tender offered to customers. The decision was ultimately made in light of other factors such as the high volatility of the virtual currency market. In fact, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia has become the first local financial institution in the country to ban customers from using credit cards to purchase digital currencies. However, Australia’s other “Big Four” banks do not seem to impose similar bans. For example, Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) and Australia’s second-largest bank, Westpac Banking Group (Westpac), have stated that they will not impose any restrictions on digital currency transactions.
However, some major global banks have introduced restrictions on digital currency transactions, including Lloyds Bank in the UK, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citibank in the United States.
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