Australia Signs WEF Treaty To Close ALL Major Banks and Switch to Fully Cashless Society

Bankwest, a subsidiary of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), is the first bank to close its branches and move the remaining 15 CBA branches in an effort to go fully digital by October 2024.

CBA and Westpac are two of Australia’s “Big Four,” or the four largest banks that have traditionally dominated Australia’s banking industry in terms of market share, revenue and total assets. The two others are ANZ and National Australia Bank.

Last year, Constantinople raised AU$32 million ($21.2 million) from investors to develop its “bank-in-a-box” platform aimed at getting more people to shift away from traditional financial institutions and toward digital banking.

Great Southern Bank, one of the country’s largest credit unions, has already signed up to launch Business+. CEO and Managing Director Paul Lewis said the company had “taken the best of the neo-bank proposition, digitally first, with what we’re good at, which is the banking license side, regulatory requirements.” Neobanks are digital-only banking platforms that operate solely online.

“We’ve got the whole package, which I think is a first in Australia,” he said, noting that other neobanks launched with only a handful of basic products such as savings accounts, but no lending capability. Small businesses would be able to sign up for an account in under 10 minutes, a time frame he called “fantastic.”