How to open an Australian bank account

The four major banks and several others run dedicated migrant and international student account-opening processes. You apply online from overseas with your passport and visa details, receive account details immediately or within a few days, and can transfer money in before you land.

You then complete identity verification in person at a branch after arrival, usually with your passport alone. Until you do, the account typically accepts deposits but restricts withdrawals.

The practical benefit is that you arrive with an Australian account number, which means an employer can pay you, a rental agent can see funds, and you are not carrying large amounts of cash. It also lets you compare exchange rates and move money at a time of your choosing rather than under pressure.

Australian banks must verify identity under anti-money-laundering law. The common framework is a points system where documents carry different weights and you need 100 points in total.

A passport or Australian birth certificate is typically a primary document worth 70 points. A driver licence is usually 40. Secondary documents such as a Medicare card, a bank card, a utility bill or a rates notice carry 25 points each. Exact weightings vary slightly by institution.

New arrivals get some latitude: within a limited window after arrival — often six weeks — many banks will open an account on a passport alone, on the basis that you have not had time to accumulate Australian documents. Ask about this explicitly if you are told you have insufficient points.

If your name appears differently across documents, bring the marriage or change-of-name certificate that links them. This is the most common reason a straightforward application stalls.

For an everyday transaction account, the things that matter are: no monthly fee (or a fee waived by a modest deposit), no ATM withdrawal fees at the bank's own network, no international transaction fee if you will spend abroad, and a decent app with instant notifications.

For savings, compare the base rate separately from the bonus rate. Most Australian savings accounts advertise a headline rate that only applies if you meet monthly conditions — a minimum deposit, no withdrawals, a set number of card transactions. Missing one condition drops you to a base rate that is often near zero.

Deposits are protected under the Financial Claims Scheme up to $250,000 per account holder per authorised deposit-taking institution. This covers banks, building societies and credit unions on the APRA list. It is per institution, not per account, and some brands share a single licence — worth checking if you hold more than that amount.

Digital-only banks and smaller institutions are covered by exactly the same guarantee as the majors, provided they are on APRA's list of authorised deposit-taking institutions.

Australia's New Payments Platform enables near-instant transfers between banks. Osko is the payment service that runs on it, and PayID lets you receive money using a phone number, email address or ABN instead of a BSB and account number.

PayID has a genuinely useful safety feature: before you send, the recipient's registered name is displayed. If you are paying 'Sarah Chen' and the name that appears is something else entirely, stop.

The critical thing to understand is that these payments are effectively irreversible. There is no chargeback mechanism as there is with a card, and once funds have moved and been withdrawn, recovery depends entirely on the receiving bank's cooperation and speed.

That makes payment method a security decision. Paying a stranger, a marketplace seller or anyone you have not met is safer by card, precisely because card payments carry dispute rights that transfers do not.