Westpac removes major ATM cash service for millions of Australians

Westpac has ended cardless cash withdrawals, forcing Australian customers to use a physical bank card to withdraw money from an ATM.

Westpac ATMs’s cardless cash withdrawal feature will no longer be available from 8pm on Friday.

‘As part of continually reviewing our products and services, Westpac will no longer offer the Cardless Cash Withdrawal feature,’ Westpac announced.

The bank claimed the change was part of a continual review into the bank’s ‘products and services’.

It stressed that customers will still be able to make cash withdrawals from Westpac ATMs across Australia as long as they use their physical card, and cash transactions can also be made at branches across the country.

Westpac confirmed that cardless cash deposits would still be available to customers.

Customers were furious about change, with many claiming ending cardless cash withdrawal ‘seemed like a backward step’.

‘Like a lot of people I don’t carry a physical card with me anymore, so cardless cash is really my only option if I need cash unexpectedly. Seems like a backward step,’ one person wrote. 

‘Sounds like a step to eliminating the ATMs completely. They don’t want to be in the cash business,’ a second person commented. 

‘Devastated by this as well. It seems incredibly sudden and unexpected. I can’t imagine it was any huge burden to maintain,’ a third person chimed. 

A fourth added: ‘Wait, so need to use a physical card now? I haven’t even had a wallet for five years.’

Others suggested the service was being exploited by scammers and was shutdown to mitigate fraud. 

Westpac customers will have to use their debit card in order to withdraw cash from anATM

One Aussie, who claimed to work at Westpac, explained the service was removed due to an ‘insanely high’ amount of fraud and scam incidents.  

‘I work for Westpac at the branch level and the reason we removed them is the number of fraud and scam incidents happening with this ability was insanely high. Like 1000 in the past month,’ they claimed. 

‘Furthermore, there are actually only around 4000 cardless cash withdrawals a week nationally which is a drop in the bucket for overall branch transactions. 

‘It’s just too much of a pain in the arse to administer at branch level with the frauds and scams and too many people exploiting other people’s internet banking to get the SMS code to extract money.’